and Words
Surrender into the night
Silently take my hand
Nobody knows what′s inside us
Nobody understands
They handed us down a dream
To live in this lonely town
But nobody hears the music
Only the echo of a hollow sound
Where do the children go
Between the bright night and darkest day?
Where do the children go
And who’s that deadly piper who leads them away?
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I started college at the University of Miami in 1986. I was a computer geek in high school and continued in college. People looked upon computers differently back then. In high school, we word processed and played games with computers; only a select few dared to program these machines. I learned to program BASIC from the thick 3-ring binders that came with the computer.
I moved into Pearson Hall. My dorm room sat in a short wing, half a flight from the lobby. The elevator button to my floor was “R1”, for Rear 1. All my neighbors in that short hallway were incoming freshmen, save the handful of upperclassmen from the year before that retained their dorm room. This is where I first met George, and through him, I met other friends.
While those friends have scattered to the wind like leaves, many still keep in touch. It’s an anchor to that time of my life that I remember fondly.
I don’t remember listening to The Hooters in high school. This surprises me a bit since they released their album, Nervous Night, the year before I graduated. Though, to be completely honest, I was a child of MTV. Before high school graduation, I discovered music through this cable channel. It’s not as though I believed MTV was the definitive reference on music, but I simply spent time in front of the television set while it continued to play.
Furthermore, I enjoyed the videos. It gave music added depth; I no longer had to imagine what artists like Blondie or Billy Joel looked like. In some cases, such as Duran Duran, the videos resembled mini-movies that told a story. For others, they were more boring concert clips, but still, they introduced me to the music.
In the case of The Hooters, one of my new friends introduced me, although I don’t remember precisely who. I had no idea what they looked like, other than the album art. I definitely had no idea what they looked like playing music. George grew up in Pennsylvania and claimed that The Hooters played a gig in his high school. I had no reason to disbelieve him, but somehow that tidbit has stayed in memory even decades later.
Honestly, while I do genuinely enjoy their music, much of it sounded similar to me. There were a couple of tracks that stood out. ‘Where Do The Children Go’ remains my favorite track from the album. It starts with the mandolin, which introduces a pair of voices in perfect synchronicity. The two voices continue, sometimes as a couple telling their own tale, other times as a third-person observer of their fate. At times, the tone is hopeful and then oscillates to melancholy. Finally, it ends just the way it started, with the distinctive tones of the mandolin.
The woman’s voice is Patty Smyth, of Scandal fame. It is by far my favorite song that features her voice.
The Hooters’ music is synonymous with that set of friends. We spent a sizeable portion of our time together that first year, much like you’d imagine for the pack from St. Elmo’s Fire before graduation. Truthfully, I don’t even remember what we did. Obviously, class didn’t occupy all our time, and neither did our studies. Though it’s likely here where I discovered this new music.
Naturally, we had our routines too. Three times a week, my sole neighbor among that bunch and I rose early for an 8 am Chemistry 101 class. We stopped by the cafeteria for breakfast and ambled that familiar path to the Cox Science Center. We climbed the steps to the main entrance of the building to that familiar lecture hall, reserved for precisely classes like this. Though I dutifully showed up like all the other college freshmen, even if, like them, I was too sleepy and unattentive to benefit from the lecture. The cold lecture hall only contributed to our inclination towards hibernation.
My advisor instructed me to take this class even if I passed the AP exam for it. As it happens, I aced the first exam but managed to fill out my identification on the ScanTron either incorrectly or illegibly. I needed to talk to Professor Hubinger to resolve it. Unfortunately, that also identified me as the familiar face who aced the exam among a lecture hall full of otherwise unengaged students. For amusement, he’d occasionally call out my name, “Isn’t that right, Mr. Wong?” My friend and I would try sitting in different locations, but he always found me.
We even tried to take classes together; we were required to take Calculus 2. One of us asserted that his instructor for Calculus 1 was good, and we should take the next class together. Three of us enrolled in that class. That was a colossal mistake. The two of them dropped the class after we received the “at-risk” notification. I understood how much the tuition was for that 4-credit class and rode it out. I navigated it to the bitter end, much like a white-knuckled pilot would try to land a plane through engine failure. In the end, I got a ‘C’ in that class. It was sufficient for me not to worry about it anymore.
We would eventually get an on-campus apartment together. This cemented our relationships, and we grew closer. All we needed to do was to get through school.
One by one, we scattered to the wind. The first one of us dropped within that first year, though we have remained friends even through the years, decades later. The second one remained in ROTC for a while, but eventually enlisted in the army. He eventually became a ranger stationed about an hour’s drive from my home in Washington. Our next departure graduated with a degree in engineering and moved to Connecticut for a while. I was the last to leave. I graduated a year late with a dual major (engineering and computer science). I accepted a job at Microsoft and started my life as an adult.
We all eventually left Florida; each in our early to mid-20s, in the figurative mornings of our lives. As I reflect on our respective lives and the echoes of that song that helped us launch us from freshman year, I can’t help but see us as the children from that story. I marvel at the promise of a great future from higher education and where we’d each eventually go.
And though now we approach the evenings of our lives, we can close the chapter on ‘Where Do the Children Go?’ Though I may still wonder about that figurative deadly piper and where he led me. I’d prefer to think that “if there’s a heaven, I found it somehow”.