DURING MY LAST YEAR of college, I rented a room in the home of a dear old widow, Mrs. Bauer.  She had thin, blue-white hair and her pink scalp shown through. The house was on a cul-de-sac just a block from the side of campus where most of my classes were held.  It was very convenient.
Mrs. Bauer spent many hours sitting with a book on her screened porch, reading through a magnifying glass.  I spent many hours alone in my room, reading books that had nothing to do with my classes and magnifying my loneliness.  I did briefly date a girl who rented a room down the street.  She talked with a lisp which, for some reason, turned me on, and she had a cat she'd named Blossom.  She pronounced it Bloth-um, of course, and so I never quite knew how to address the poor feline.
That summer Mrs. Bauer rented her other spare  bedroom to a guy who had just gotten out of the military.  My life became more complicated, not only because I was now having to share a bathroom but because Roger, the new guy, was a warmonger.  "Better dead than Red," he was fond of saying, and I wondered why he left the service.  We had some horrible arguments.  His simplistic view was that I was an unpatriotic Commie.  I egged him on more than I should have.  I told him Jane Fonda was my favorite actress.
Roger declared his major field of study to be Serbo-Croatian.  It didn't take long for him to realize that he'd over-estimated his scholastic aims.  He switched to Spanish.  This too turned out to be beyond his grasp.  When I graduated and left town, he was majoring in geography.
My year with Mrs. Bauer was generally pleasant, notwithstanding the presence of the Raving Patriot for two of the three trimesters.  Because he lacked a sense of humor, that only enlivened mine.  I wouldn't be surprised if, as Vietnam heated up, he re-enlisted.  As a geography major, he at least should have had an idea where it was, if not why we were there.