This week we continue my nostalgic look back at my college days. We talk about my third semester at the downtown campus where I met a woman who was the first able-bodied woman I ever dated.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 48 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue my nostalgic look back at my college days especially my third semester at IUPUI and the first woman I ever dated who wasn’t in a wheelchair.

We left last week’s episode on a bit of a cliffhanger telling you about meeting a woman who was the first able woman I ever dated, the first person in college I dated, and a relationship that lasted for decades. If you haven’t seen that episode I suggest you go back and see it first. There are some things that I set up there that pay off in this episode.

I mentioned that we met in the Hideaway Cafeteria in the basement of the Blake Street Library. I would journey there every day after sociology class. I had no trouble getting someone to open the front door to the library or pushing the button on the elevator to get to the basement. The Hideaway was a real cafeteria with cafeteria trays in a food service line offering a variety of choices at a decent price. This was unlike the 38th St. K-building lunchroom with nothing but vending machines. I didn’t seem to have any difficulty finding someone who would grab a tray for me and walk through the line with me.

I think it was about the second or third week of the semester when I was assisted by a rather short full-figured woman with long black hair. Most people just carried the tray to a table for me and then went on their way. She offered to sit down with me for lunch and explained that we were in sociology class together. There were over 30 people in the class and I hadn’t noticed her. Of course, I wore the same color wheelchair every day so I was quite familiar to her.

I learned that her name was Ella Vinci (as in Leonardo da) but she went by Ellie. She was a couple of years older than me. Reasonably attractive but not as hot as some women Himat the downtown campus. From that day forward we had lunch together almost every day.

She was very outgoing and quite kind to me. We would have long discussions about the topics in our Social Problems class. She was quite liberal politically and a crusader for social justice and women’s rights issues. Being of Sicilian descent she was also Roman Catholic. Although I was drifting away from the church at the time, I had not yet left the Catholic Church. So I considered her faith a plus.

As a psychology major, it was obvious she cared about people and was very sensitive towards their feelings. In her spare time, she volunteered to answer a suicide prevention hotline. By helping me with my lunch tray each day, she made sure I got fries with that. It took everything I had not to jump to the conclusion that she was “the one” I’d been waiting for.

I can’t say that I actually fell in love with her but I was quite attracted to her I certainly felt that the relationship was off to a great start and had lots of potential.

Soon after we started hanging out for lunch, we were joined by another of our sociology classmates – a guy named Bill. I don’t recall his last name. He was a tall lanky fellow who was extremely socially awkward. He revealed that he struggled with epilepsy which he kept mostly under control with medication. Because of his condition, he couldn’t get a driver’s license. He talked about how difficult that was during high school. Nobody wants to date a guy who can’t drive and who has the potential to fall down in fits of convulsions at any moment. Naturally, he was teased and bullied throughout his life for his condition. I could commiserate with him about the inability to drive and the adverse effect it had on my high school social life.

One day when Bill wasn’t around, Ellie sat down with me visibly troubled. “I’ve got to talk to you about Bill. I don’t know what to do. He wants me to meet his parents.”

“Do you mean like just introduce you as ‘my friend from school’ or ‘MEET the Parents?’”

“He means ‘meet the parents’ as in he wants to introduce them to his future wife.”

She went on to explain that the entire extent of their relationship outside our usual three-person lunch date was that one day when it was raining, she took him home to his apartment rather than having him wait on the bus in the rain. They ordered some pizza and either watched TV or put on some music I don’t recall. They sat next to each other on his sofa and at one point he put his arm around her and tried to grab her breast. She rejected the advance and he apologized. From that lone encounter and our shared lunches, he was already making wedding plans.

I listened attentively and tried not to show what I was feeling inside. A single sentence was screaming inside my head. That sentence was the proverbial, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

When she concluded her story and asked my advice I began explaining to her that Bill’s epilepsy was a disability. The social effects of it were not significantly different from what I had experienced. I explained to her that it takes willpower and ambition to believe that you are lovable. You operate under the assumption that if anyone was going to take you seriously as a boyfriend it would be a very rare thing. So there is pressure to make the absolute most out of even the smallest opportunity.

I don’t think I had yet thought of the joke about falling in love because the girl at McDonald’s asked if you wanted fries but I explained the dynamics behind such a situation. I told her that she was probably the first girl in his entire life who had ever shown him ANY kindness whatsoever. And so he had to jump at the situation full force and push it to extreme expectations.

The entire time I was “speculating” about what was going on inside his head, I was in fact talking about myself. I just kept thinking over and over again how terrifyingly close I had been to making a fool of myself the way he had.

Let me be clear. I hadn’t yet fallen in love with her. However, I was actively pursuing a course of action in which I sincerely hoped that someday she would meet my parents in that way. So although I had been keeping a level head and an appropriate perspective about my relationship with Ellie, the similarities to Bill terrified me.

She was amazed at the depth of insight that I had into his personality and she better understood what had happened. She had no idea that those insights were mostly based on my own feelings.

After our conversation, she spoke to Bill and made it clear to him she had zero interest. I don’t think the three of us were together again after that. I did see him once one-on-one and he explained he felt he had failed with Ellie because he had tried to put moves on her on his first date. I didn’t bother explaining to him that it wasn’t a date and furthermore, his issues went beyond that. If he wanted to believe that version of events, I wasn’t going to try to dissuade him from it.

Ellie later heard that Bill had a girlfriend. This one didn’t hesitate to take him to bed or so he claimed. The troubling thing was, that his new girlfriend was some sort of religious fanatic who didn’t believe in medicine and was persuading him to stop taking his anti-epilepsy drugs. That really concerned us both because, despite the issues, we liked the guy. We never learned what happened after that.

The consequence of this entire situation was it sealed my friendship with her. We grew much closer and eventually, I found the courage to ask her on a date. We went out at least three times and I think we got together at my house on at least one other occasion or I may just remember things we did after a date. We are talking about events 49 years ago.

Our first date was for dinner and we saw the movie “Jaws”. She had seen it before but wanted to see it again. The only time I was really scared during the movie was when Richard Dreyfus was inspecting the abandoned boat underwater and looked into the hole in the side of the boat. A dead guy’s head pops out of the hole with his eyeball hanging out. I flinched along with the entire audience but even more so because at that instant, she grabbed my arm. I said, “You did that just to scare me. You’ve seen the movie before. You knew what was going to happen.” She insisted that even though she knew what was coming, it made her jump, and grabbing me was a reflex. Yeah really.

We also went to dinner and then saw the movie version of the rock opera “Tommy” by the Who. Unfortunately, I had some bad chicken at dinner and was a bit nauseous by the end of the movie so we didn’t hang out long afterward.

We also went to see “The Godfather Part 2”. She said it was about her people because she was from a Sicilian background. Not that she had any mob connections. She was shocked at the scene when Kay told Michael that she didn’t have a miscarriage but it was an abortion. She said that was huge. Being Catholic myself and my mother being staunchly pro-life I knew actually what she meant but Ellie seemed to be especially affected by the scene.

I have distinct memories of sitting with her in my room listening to records. We speculated about the meaning of the lyrics to “Still… You Turn Me On” from the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album “Brain Salad Surgery.” What did it mean when he said “Someone get me a ladder?” She thought perhaps, “so I can reach you.” I thought it was an interesting insight I never forgot.

Our most memorable date was when she invited me to my first hockey game. It was an Indianapolis Racers game at Market Square Arena. Now, I’ve already told you what a sweet and sensitive woman she was. But I have not said that she was soft-spoken as well. We had a very gentle personality. Except at a hockey game. At a hockey game, an entirely different personality emerged. It was quite common for a fistfight to break out at such a game. This was in the days before helmets were mandatory so the fights were particularly nasty. It was a minor league team though it seemed they allowed the fights to go on a little longer than perhaps the NHL would today. There’s an old joke, I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. This was one of those games. She would scream and yell and cheer at the fights. She would also yell at the referees and didn’t hesitate to hurl expletives. I looked at her like, “Okay, who are you and what did you do with Ellie?”

I have often described her as the woman who taught me a deep appreciation of violence on ice.

She didn’t make it easy for me to keep my perspective on our relationship. At one point, she took a vacation to Puerto Rico with a girlfriend or a relative I don’t recall which. When she returned home she went on and on about how beautiful it was and speculated perhaps someday we would go there together. She seemed completely oblivious to the challenges that would involve. It’s one thing to accept me without regard to my disability but it was quite another thing to act as though there were no real obstacles between us. The statement was so unrealistic it was painful for me. I could have interpreted it to mean she would do absolutely anything necessary for us to be together. But fortunately, I recognized it for what it was. She really had no realistic concept of what day-to-day life would be with me under normal circumstances let alone taking an exotic vacation together.

I told my dad about the conversation and he was concerned I was developing unrealistic expectations. He said that I needed to keep my perspective. He said, “You can have a really nice time with her but you have to understand the challenges you face in a relationship.” I explained to him quite the contrary that I was not getting carried away because I was realizing how unrealistic she was about what life would be like with me. She was one who wasn’t keeping perspective. I went on to explain the struggle I faced because finding anyone who would take ANY interest in me would be extremely rare. I tried to explain to him the pressure I felt to make the very best of every opportunity because I didn’t think I would get a lot of chances. He then quoted the old adage, “Girls are like streetcars. If you miss one, another one comes along in a few minutes.”

“But dad… There are no more streetcars.”

“Okay, smart ass… Then buses. It’s just an old expression.”

“An expression I’ve heard before. But ask yourself, how many of those streetcars or buses are wheelchair accessible? That’s pretty rare. I feel like I have to catch every accessible bus I can. It’s just that this bus driver thinks she can take me to Puerto Rico and I know she can’t.”

When I said, “How many of the buses are wheelchair accessible?” Dad then understood what I was saying.

She brought me a souvenir from Puerto Rico – a small brown handmade bud vase. She had placed in the vase a small sprig of artificial Lily of the Valley flowers she had doused with her favorite perfume. I swear I could still smell that perfume on the plastic flowers years later. I don’t know what it was but it was distinctly her. I recall one day going into the library waiting on the elevator and I thought I smelled her perfume. I looked around the room and she was sitting at a table several feet away.

When I returned to the 38th St. campus for my fourth semester, we didn’t see much of each other anymore. I would occasionally see her downtown and I think she took one class at 38th St. We remained friends but didn’t go out anymore and didn’t see much of one another.

In 1976, Ellie took a bus trip to New Hampshire to campaign door-to-door for Indiana Senator Birch Bayh in his bid for the Democratic nomination for President. He was one of the most liberal politicians Indiana has ever seen. He was known for his work for equal rights, the ERA, the author of Title IX, and a whole host of other liberal causes. I encourage you to read the linked Wikipedia article about him. After finishing third in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts he dropped out of the race. Jimmy Carter became the Democrat nominee and the 39th president. Bayh continued to be an influential senator until he was defeated in 1980 by Dan Quayle who benefited from the Republican landslide that year.

On that trip to New Hampshire, Ellie met a guy, fell in love, and they were married. I was invited to the wedding and attended. At the reception afterward, she gave me a big hug and gave me a small sprig of the lily of the valley flowers from her wedding bouquet. I took it home and put it in the vase with the plastic flowers. It sat on a bookshelf in my bedroom for decades. I’m not sure what happened to it. It’s not there now.

She obtained a Master’s degree and went to work as a family counselor for an organization called Catholic Charities. She and her husband were extremely active in the church. I think perhaps they had become members of a secular Franciscan order. I think she had at least one perhaps two daughters.

I ran into her once or twice at archdiocesan events and we occasionally spoke by phone. Many years after we were in college together, I took the opportunity to tell her why I had so much insight into what Bill was feeling. I confessed it was because, to a much lesser degree, I was not different from him. I said I was grateful that I had not gotten out of control as had Bill. And I was grateful for the years of friendship that we had because I had been able to keep a proper perspective. I never did tell her how upset I had been when she suggested we could run off to Puerto Rico for a vacation together. It’s

One time I called her for advice when a friend of mine needed a family lawyer for a custody issue. I thought perhaps having worked in family counseling she could recommend someone. It was then that I learned she was divorced. That really surprised me considering how devoutly Catholic she was and how difficult it is to be a divorced Catholic.

Seven years ago just as I was recovering from getting my trach installed I discovered her on Facebook. She had just returned from a vacation in Rome with her daughters. We resumed our friendship online but she had radically changed since I had seen her last.

You won’t believe this but now she was a Trump supporter.

That’s why I want you to read the Wikipedia article about Senator Bayh. You could not find two people at farther opposite ends of the political spectrum than those two. I can only speculate that her staunch Catholicism led her to be radically antiabortion and thus Republican despite the conservative positions that were diametrically opposed to all of the social justice and feminist issues she supported in her college days.

I treated her kindly online and we reminisced about the good old days but I completely avoided any political discussions with her. I knew we could never be really close again. It’s not that I couldn’t love a conservative. But I can’t respect anyone who supports irrationality like a Trump supporter. I’m guessing it was about halfway through the Trump administration that she announced she was quitting Facebook. She couldn’t handle the toxicity. Perhaps she couldn’t deal with the reality that Trump was such an irrational, misguided, narcissistic, incompetent idiot. I don’t know.

She certainly wasn’t the woman I knew in college and I miss her, the original her, very much.

I had wasted my relationship with Rosie throughout high school because I constantly lamented that it wasn’t a romance and I never appreciated Rosie’s friendship the way I should have until it was too late. That lesson bore fruit in my relationship with Ellie in that I could enjoy our friendship even though it wasn’t a romance. And thanks to that sad guy Bill, I avoided making a fool of myself by pushing too hard to try to make something happen that wasn’t there. I learned not just to allow the friendship to happen but to be fulfilled completely by that friendship rather than seeing it solely as a stepping stone to something else. It was a lesson that served me well in every other relationship I’ve had with women for the rest of my life.

At age 68, with little or no social life beyond online friends, my chances of finding romance are smaller than ever. That doesn’t mean I’ve given up. I still see and enjoy friendships with women and cherish what I have while keeping my perspective on the difficulties that would be involved in a relationship.

As mentioned previously, I’m going to take a break for a few weeks to catch up on some other projects. In early January I will return with a political rant about Facebook and other social media. Then we will resume my look back at my college days. Look for Oscar movie reviews in February and March and then we will probably explore the first job I ever had.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.