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Essay 17:  That Girl From Dartmouth
Time:         Junior Year, College

After my debacle with Katlyn and my chance encounter with Nancy Grey and my nowhere with Jane, my friend childhood Ilene, who was attending Dartmouth at the time, decided to set me up with a girl from her college who lived in the same dorm.  For the life of me, I cannot remember her name. I asked Ilene and she couldn’t remember it either.  We found a picture of her but it wasn’t enough to jog either of our memories.  I recognized her instantly but that was all.  No name, nothing else came to mind.  Anyway, she had long hair, lighter brown in color and she entered Dartmouth in 1972 as part of the class of 76.  My friend Ilene had started college at Smith in 1969 and was sort of an exchange student at Dartmouth, which had been, up to that time, an all-male school.  While Ilene was there, Dartmouth decided to go co-ed and she was among the first 30 women to ever graduate from that school.

This particular girl lived across the hall from her.  Ilene was entering her senior year, I was entering my junior year and this girl was a freshman.  I flew out to Hanover to visit Ilene and she introduced me to her.  I remember that she was very nice and she was very pretty.  We went out for sandwiches one night but we can’t remember how we got there.  We went to a place called the Gourmet Sandwich Shoppe in White River Junction.  I also remember that she was from Boston.  I seem to recall that there was some problem, some very serious problem.  I think it was that her mom had cancer and it changed her from a happy, friendly person into a sad and somber one.  I think I ever wrote her a few times but that old trick had worn out its usefulness.  I don’t even have the letters any more to go back and reference.

I think that the problem with her mother was so severe (she may have died) that the girl was forced to drop out of school.  I have combed the school records posted on the Internet and cannot find anything familiar about the names of that graduating class or the year before or the year after.  I know this isn’t a lot of information to go on but there aren’t a lot of women you’d have to sift through.  After all, Ilene’s class only had 30 women in it.  This girl’s class couldn’t have had too many more.

She wasn’t a big part of my life; we barely go to know each other. She’s more like a big what-if.  What if she had stayed at Dartmouth?  What if I had gotten to know her better?  What if her mom hadn’t died and she stayed a happy, fun person to around? It’s all just a big blur.  But in some ways, she embodies the very spirit of your show, at least as I understand it.  She may very well have been my soul mate.  How could anybody know?

I would like to thank you, the producers, for forcing me to remember her, though.  Without this exercise, our brief time together would have disappeared permanently into the past.

I know it isn’t a lot of information to go on but if you could track her down, I’d love to find out what happened to her and if she found some happiness in her life.