<p>Ok, Ok, I've held off all this time, because my story is not particularly funny, but it is the college visit of intestinal fortitude, akin to "Forced Marches Around the Quad" or the person who did the visit in the hurricane.
Cast your mind back to Jan 2004. MLK weekend occurred at the end of the coldest spell of weather in the greater NYC area in 20 years. This,of course, was our weekend to go on the Sweet 16 trip to NYC, complete with shopping, Broadway shows and a side trip to New Haven.
The expected high the day of our visit was 5 - remember we're from AL. When we got on the train at Grand Central, a very cheerful voice came on the loudspeaker, full of the camaraderie of adversity, and very unlike the stereotypes of New Yorkers "Well folks, we're going to give it a try! Most of the tracks are cleared, some are frozen up, but we don't think we will derail. Unfortunately, some of the doors between cars are frozen open , and those cars are uninhabitable, and the others are pretty darn chilly. We don't know if we can make it all the way to New Haven, but we're going to try!"
What!!! Our info session time got used up by the unusually long train trip, we did make it, going rather slowly. We arrived at the tour site by taxi, and the person manning the desk, looked at us like we were nuts, I think she was right. The poor tour guide arrived, a handsome young man, senior, anxiously awaiting news from Yale Law, hatless, coatless, gloveless (remember it is about +3 at this point) obviously planning on no one being so stupid as to come for a tour on the 2nd coldest day in 20 years. But, not to be deterred, there we were, DD and I, and a dear friend with her daughter who had made the trip with us, AND a hapless, single female tourist from Switzerland, an older lady not interested in the coed nature of the bathrooms and the size of the classes, but in the architecture of the campus. Needless to say, it was the lightning tour, with the poor boy's nose turning redder and redder with every step, our two daughters swooning (he was cute, and well spoken), and the poor Swiss tourist mystified when we began grilling him about what his Mama really thought about the coed bathrooms when he was a freshman (answer, she didn't like it, and since he was a CT native, we didn't feel like overly sensitive Southern Moms). Someday I have to go back and actually take the tour. The only architecture of note for us was the rare book library built by the GreenStamp guy. Of course, neither the tour guide, our offspring, or the Swiss tourist, had any idea why we were oohing and aahing and why it really did look like a GreenStamp book, because none of them had any idea what GreenStamps were. My friend and I, though, we had licked a lot growing up, we got it immediately.</p>
<p>DD went to a camp at Yale the next summer, and decided it wasn't for her, even in much better weather, but something took, because my friend's daughter applied and was accepted EA.</p>