Last week I found myself tossing and turning in bed, wracked with crazy dreams. Perhaps it was the strange place I was staying, the unfamiliar bed, or the fact that I was on alert as one of the chaperones responsible for 7 10 and 11 year old boys. It could have been any or all of those things. Or perhaps it was something a bit stranger, a bit more surreal. The dorm where we were lodged happened to be the same one in which my father lived over 60 years ago when he was a student at Mercer University in Macon. In fact, the room I was in was just next to my father’s old dorm room! In fact, the wall against which my bed rested was also the wall to his old room. I wonder if the walls have memories they were trying to pass along. I wonder if my breath felt oddly familiar to those old corridors, or if my name, being the same as my father’s, invoked smiles from the walls as it echoed through the corridors. My father was famous for his pranks, often invoking the ire of his dorm mates. Was it dad who was disturbing my slumber as he haunted the halls of his alma mater, or was only that were awakened by the irony of a chance housing assignment for a week of children’s camp that kept me tossing all night?
