So let's set the stage. Here I am with my brother, we're cleaning out my freshman room at Stanford. That's where Mitt went for his freshman year, before his mission in Paris, before completing his college years at BYU. So what did I know of Mitt...not much. But I DID sit next to him in Western Civ. Seeing as it's an election year, maybe I'll just jot down my impressions. Actually I already have, they are in this poem (see below). For me it all seems just like Yesterday, which of course was one of the big hits for that year.
Just another boy in the class
Seated next to me in the course formerly known as
Western Civilization was Mr. Mormon himself,
the one we see on television running for President.
Each week he wore a different-colored button-down
Oxford-cloth shirt, and because I was close by,
I could see how darker pixels mixed with white
to make pale lavender, or robin's-egg blue, or
the yellow that went particularly well with his tanned
complexion, his smoothed-back, un-ruffled coiffure.
The week we covered pantheism must have been
especially difficult for him. While he was undoubtedly
used to the concept of multiple wives, the idea that
different godheads might reside in various rocks
and streams must have been slightly threatening.
I remember he found talking easy, the way most of the
males in the class took to grandstanding, but can't
remember anything he said, which is the difficulty
he carries with him to the present day. Not surprisingly
I have become suspicious of latter-day saints,
rumpled agnostics win me over with their gritty allure.
