after 12 years of grammar and high school together, mark and i were accepted to harvard. we both interviewed with dan jiggets (a chicago bear that played at harvard). we both were recruited to play football. so, another 4 years with this guy? we were always good friends; but, this was the beginning of a new stage. i wanted to request mark as a roommate. he declined stating that, to have the total Harvard experience, we would meet more people if we went into the housing lottery.
i had a roommate that lived in boston. i never saw him. he went home every night. mark also ended up having a different social life than his roommates. both of us lived in wigglesworth. he was E, i was I. so, we still saw each other a lot. by the end of freshman year, mark had enough of a "random" harvard experience and we entered the real housing lottery with a third good friend from Chicago, Otto R. mark also began his first serious relationship with one of my "entryway" mates. that relationship lasted longer than we were at harvard.
social engineering runs deep in the psyche of harvard university. that year, everyone i knew from sports/football/hockey as well as people who were just plain "wild and crazy" were "quaded". i have no doubts we were purposefully sent there to change the reputation of that part of campus. until that point, the quad was a sleepy, hermetic little outpost of the harvard campus. that was about to change. we found another group of castaways and formed a rooming group that lived in the 10 man suite at Currier house for the next three years. it was about as perfect a college experience as one could imagine. we had parties, we got into trouble, but the same core group remained in that room for the next 3 years. mark was an essential part of this group even though he spent a significant amount of time at quincy house also. if you face the main entrance of currier house (or whatever name it is now), mark lived in the room with the window the second from the left.
i still remember mark getting extremely passionate about a "bottle bill" that was meant to increase cash deposits on returnable bottles to cut down on trash in boston. see how well that worked? at various times, there was tons of stickers and material lying around the suite. and i remembered distinctly hearing the term "rollie and his f***ing bottle bill" from his more politically disinterested roommates, including me.
sharing a chicagoland background with mark, every so often the northeast or the northeasterners or the new englanders would do something that would just make us nuts...and we could always embrace our inner chicagoan and take refuge in our shared heritage....