Sometime It Snows In April - Ten Years On...

 Well, I guess my background of fine-tuning my own HTML leaves me disappointed with this editor.  But anyway...

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Prince.  A rather famously anti-drug person, he sadly died from an unexpected (I'd guess) drug overdose.  Now his initial explosion into the music world here was well below my radar, as I really wasn't all that tuned into the local music world.  I was pretty focused on popular music with a rather intense interest in what we used to call hard rock.

When Prince took the skills he had developed locally and blew up the entire music world, I disagreed at the time, but as time went on, I had to agree with my wife.  While Prince was ground breaking and a gigantic talent, he likely had as much of an influence on popular music as the Beatles had.  Yeah, I know, they had very little in common on the surface, but if you step back a bit, you will realize exactly the same thing.  

 In the early 1960s, rock music had experienced a moment, and the world had taken notice, but was starting to move on.  The music remained the favorite of teens and young adults but otherwise did not seem to be moving forward.  Then four fellows came out of almost nowhere, not that Liverpool by way of Germany is nowhere, but taking the location and making it trendy was what the Beatles did, as did Prince.  Music changed, thanks to the pushing and prodding of the Beatles, and Prince and his stable of musicians that spread the sound did the same.

When it hit theaters, a college friend of mine was thrilled - he had seen himself in the background of a scene he knew they had filmed, when he was visiting a friend in Minneapolis.  He was over the moon to be in the movie.  I had nothing like that.  

In fact, I can show you just exactly how little I had going for me in the attraction department in my second pass at college.  My first, straight from High School, taught me a great deal.  The biggest thing was that I was not in any way prepared for or motivated to go to college.  I had gone wiht the crowd and followed the rest, and the expectations of my family - and done poorly.  I withdrew from school, went to work, and made some money.  And I learned just exactly how desperate my world might be if I didn't get some motivation.

 Returning to college, I found a new group of friends that had only school in common, initially.  Then, of course, I was able to get into a programming class, and, well...  That was the end of that.  The computer world ate me alive.  

I did, in fact, find a group of people that did both motivate me and inspire me.  And a few other things worked out, I turned a few nasty surprises into a bit of a profit, and in the end, I found a partner.

That really wasn't looking all that likely for a long time.  I was probably about as physically attractive as a recently-washed dumpster, but I was technically pretty smart when it came to computers.  I'd fallen in with a group of people who were really going on to do great things.  

Before that, though ... well, I had a group of friends whom I'd known in some cases already for a decade or more, and others who were new.  One afternoon, just out of nowhere, on a payday for me, a buddy of mine asked if I'd want to buy a pair of tickets from him.  "Oh yeah?  What show?"  Hoping for AC/DC, Journey, The Who, Styx, Kansas...  "Prince" he said.  "The Day after Christmas Show in St. Paul."  

The knucklehead that lives in the back of my brain and is quite often driving when I need to meet people, inspire or impress, or in any way convince them I'm not a dork of the old world came roaring to life.  "Look, pal, there's got to be someone of the female persuasion who would be willing to go to a Prince Concert with ME."  Right.  That's a guaranteed nope.  

And the knucklehead was so very utterly wrong, I ended up giving the ticket to a male friend of mine for $5.  I had paid $40 for it, and got conned into driving, too.  

Mind you, it sure as heck served as a good story, if nothing else.  But like I said earlier, motivation was needed, and I sure as heck found it.  The fall semester, before the concert, was quite educational in both intended and unintentional ways.  

I've written before of my accidental discovery that quite often, organizations that have very specific and very restrictive rules, overlook some of the obvious ones.  My college published a rule book that governed a whole lot of life in a dorm.  And one of the more specific sections covered the construction they would allow in dorm rooms.  Most rooms weren't all that big and often required you lived with a roommate.  Walking into a dorm room you would often find a bed and a desk for each occupant - and the list of desired furniture was long.  A couch to sit on comfortably, to watch TV, a TV to watch.  Maybe a refrigerator to store some of your own food.  And of course a stereo or other source of music.  All of which did not fit easily into a small dorm room.

Which is why some engineering student, or father of one, decided to put the bed up on a platform.  They called it a loft.  

So when my buddies and I decided to attend college together, we managed to get dorm rooms across the hall from one another.  And shortly after getting a good look into the room (with a tape measure), we decided the existing beds weren't all that great, we were going to build our own to replace them.  

Which is where the college rules SHOULD have stopped us, except for a rather obvious omission. A very long list of requirements defined what a loft had to be, withstand, and could and could not do.  The glaring omission was that, oh, hey, if there's a loft the university installed in your room, no, you can't replace it with a loft of your own.  

We were moving into dorm rooms that were 18 feet deep, 8 feet wide, and 12 feet tall.  And had two narrow single beds already installed.  

So when we submitted the plans for our lofts to the Life Safety department which had to approve all loft plans, we were very careful in including engineering drawings that emphasized where we had exceeded the minimal requirements for hardware (no bolts less than 3/8" when the plans called for a minimum 3/16") and all of our information.  Names, phone numbers, the year, and the dorm building, floor, and room.  So when we got the plans back, approved, before the previous school year had ended, we got to work.

I built a 7-foot-10-inch wide by 8-foot long platform with a 2x4 frame topped by 3/4" plywood, that stood on 8-foot legs that were doubled 2x4 legs bolted to the underside of the platform and braced in two different directions to prevent shifting.  My across the hall friends had built a slightly more advanced platform using 2x8 lumber and setting the mattresses down into the frame.

This difference was the big difference that allowed me to use the doors and elevator unmodified, while they had to disassemble their platform because it didn't fit through doors or the elevator.  We got the existing structures out of the rooms and stored at the warehouse leased for business by one of my friend's fathers.  We paid for tarps to wrap and protect these rather rudimentary platforms and ours replaced them.  

We were pretty thrilled until the first weekend of the school year (after move-in weekend), where the final Life Safety inspections would certify your dorm room was approved.  My buddies across the hall were waiting to finish their loft with the lighting and speakers until we had the approval.  Which wasn't given.  We were told we could not remove the existing lofts.  

Mind you, none of us then was considering a legal career.  And none of us did.  But I pulled out the approved, confirmed drawings we had to keep to show during the inspection, and pointed at the had of Life Safety's signature next to the stamp stating "Approved."  "And" I said not all that diffidently, "it says nothing in the J Book about removal of lofts."  "But you can't do that" was the response of our inspector, undoubtedly an attorney now.  So we rode the denial up the food chain.  And the student government did note the book said nothing about loft removal, we were apparently the first geniuses who came up with the idea.  Then again, the other two fellows worked for their father's construction companies, and I was the son of a woodworker.  

Being the Boy Scout I am, I headed down to our hearing early, and went to the room.  There was an older monk in the room, arranging furniture.  "Can I help?" I asked.  Figured it would keep my mind out of blind panic mode.  We started chatting, and it turned out that the monk knew my father, not unusual considering my father was both a graduate of the university and a long-term employee.  "I'm sorry, Father, what was your name?"  14 years of Catholic Education at the time and a father who worked with monks, I knew you never referred to them as "Brother" if you didn't know.  All monks might wear robes, most wore dark colors, only ordained priests wore collars.  He didn't have one on.  

"I'm Father Roman Paur."  Gulp.  The Vice President of Student Affairs.  The boss of the students and all departments that are involved with student life.  And the boss of the fellow who headed the Life Safety department.  Boy, had we stepped in it all the way up to our chins.  He was there, SETTING UP for our hearing.  If there were a list of bad omens, this was the cover of the whole book.  

So our hearing started.  And I used the only defense I had - not the "ignorance of the law is no excuse" but "everything else is so clearly and completely stated, why doesn't it say we can't remove the lofts?"  Fr. Roman looked at us, then at the head of life safety.  "Maybe it's time we update the J Book."  

"We've stored the lofts in my father's warehouse, where they are safe.  They're with other items he's stored while we're remodeling the 
(project of the month - his father had, like he has now, the confidence of the community to do a fantastic job on all construction jobs they managed, probably our other ace in the hole that we never intended to use because we were hoping we didn't need to fall back on family names)."  

"Well," said Fr. Roman, "I think if these gentlemen are willing to help us rewrite the loft rules to make sure they are as carefully designed and constructed as theirs are and they include the note that existing lofts cannot be removed, we can let them keep their lofts as a lesson to us to be sure we're approving appropriate structures."  Right there I decided to shut up and sit down before my foot found it's way to my mouth.  

The J Book work was done in weeks, and I went to work building a business plan.  That next spring I covered the campus with approved signs for students to contact me if they wanted a professionally constructed loft that would meet or exceed the university's new loft requirements.  Because I'd helped to write them, I would tell folks quietly when they asked how.  And they would check with Life Safety to learn yes, I'd been involved in the Great Loft Confusion.  

Which is how, the fall after the next fall, after my old friends left and I had started making new friends, a friend of a friend of mine asked for help with a loft.  I had met her the previous fall, she was the girlfriend of a friend of mine.  Their relationship was fairly undefined.  I didn't know what to make of it.  But the next fall, after she asked for help, I agreed to build her and her roommate lofts, all they needed to do was buy the materials, I'd throw in the labor for free, or maybe we could go out for dinner sometime, my treat.  

I finished the lofts, got them installed, and the next weekend we went to the Twin Cities to visit the Renaissance Festival.  She had her car.  I had my car.  We set off in a group and arrived, then wandered the festival.  This was in the dark ages, when we didn't have cell phones.  But we managed to stay fairly well-coordinated together.  Then, as I stood looking at a booth, and she was near me, she ducked in front of me.  "My Italian prof is behind you.  Don't move."  

I started attending the Renaissance Festival to pick up any ideas I could for improving my D&D campaigns and worlds...  Not authentic medieval banter, certainly, but hey, there were people there.  Some people even wore armor, carried swords and shields, and ... well, there was also the food.  But here was a damsel in soe sort of distress seeking help from me.  Yeah, her knight in shining armor.  Kinda.  

She moved off after the prof moved away.  I continued to wander the festival, and eventually we went home.  The following weekend, after her loft was approved by the campus life folks on her campus, she offered to cook me dinner.  I'm no fool.  After my early shift at work, I ran next door to the liquor store and intended to pick up some beer and wine, but didn't know what dinner would be and knew just enough to know the wrong thing would be the wrong thing.  So I swung by the nearby grocery store, picked up some soda, and stopped in their video rental shop, picked out a few random movies, including Predator and The Witches Of Eastwick.  Yeah, great date movies, right?  

Friday, September 30, 1988.   Yep.  A week before my birthday, but she made her mom's meatloaf recipe, which I still love to this day.  And she's never sat through another showing of Predator.  But I did find a life partner and best friend.  Because I built a loft.  And to this day I still get grief from her, we didn't know each other at the time I had the Prince tickets, but she's the one who introduced me to Prince's Sometimes It Snows In April.