CLASS OF '77

"We're drunk, we're stoned, we're high as heaven! We're the class of '77"!!!*
* not officially sanctioned by the high school as the class song.

I met a girl from Colorado in 1974, she was visiting her older sister who's husband was an anthropology professor at UT and was friends with the father of a good friend of mine.
She got ditched at this friends house when the adults went to a "function". I came over and the rest was history.
She would return each summer after that, and between those visits and a truly amazing letter campaign, we were in "love". She moved to Austin to attend UT, I was a senior, with a car, a booming weed enterprise and lots of money. She had an apartment. It was a match made in heaven.
Then, I wrecked my car.The pot supply dwindled. I was soon relegated to poor kid who had to hitch hike or bum rides or (gasp) ride the bus.
One day after walking almost all the way home from school, my mom and I got into it.
I was bummed about the car and my loss of "income", she was convinced I was sulking in the hopes of guilting them into buying me another car. I knew my parents couldn't afford that and didn't expect it, I was just bummed. Things escalated and the last image of my mom I had for almost a year was her chasing me out of the house in her house coat, screaming like a maniac and throwing a large stock pot at me. She threw it with such force, she lost her balance and almost fell off the porch. I instinctively came to catch her. But she recovered on her own and was swinging wildly at me, demanding I "bloody well get the fuck away from her"! I said something to the equivalent of "nyah!Ya missed me bitch"! and walked the 3/4 mile driveway to bee caves road in tears.
I sat in the woods for awhile until I had my shit together and hitched over to my girlfriends apartment.
That is how I came to live with my first wife.
We were married 21 December 1978, 21 days after my 18th birthday.
prior to this union, I worked at the Hilton as a dishwasher, a room service waiter, room service manager and then the Sheraton-Crest as a room service banquet waiter. On my 18th birthday I went to work for the State School.
I went to school part time and worked full time, the 6a to 2p shift on a dorm of adult downs syndrome males.
My "wife" worked part time in the gift shop at the Hilton and attended the UT business school full time, where she eventually graduated cum laude and on the deans list.
Around her junior year, my mom started picking up on some vibes from her and eventually became convinced that I was being used to get her through college.The plan to move to Colorado after her graduation was the icing on the cake for my mom, she wants to get you away from your family and friends and then ditch you. To me, this was a ridiculous notion, we were in LOVE damn it!
As it turned out, mother really DID know best. And I never doubted her gut again.
We moved to Colorado, in less than a year she ditched me. I was on my own in a strange city, away from my friends and family.
More on that later.
I'll tell you about the wonderland that was Dorm 18 tomorrow...