I was Doc's assistant that summer!  

In the great imaginary competition that was going on a while back on these airwaves for Best Summer Ever, I thought about claiming a special category of award for this summer:  Worst Summer Ever.  None of you, I believe, can claim that title -- so there!   

I mean that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps not.   Lots of intense stories from that summer.  Not a lot of photos of happy students at play, arms around each other as they walk back to the dorm.  Dark moments.  Lines not learned.  Rampant insecurities and fears.  Fire ant bites and stickers in bare feet.  Picnic table collapses and goblets thrown in anger.  A Benedick and Beatrice who couldn't stand each other, and didn't seem to care too much for their words at times either.  Struggles for oxygen.  But at some point in the subsequent years I realized that this experience was just as rich in its own ways as any of the glorious ones.  Just a different kind of learning; and Mark clearly testifies to that.  Sometimes falling on your face teaches you more than reaching the moon (or so Edgar keeps telling me).  

Doc never gave up on any of us, not even on the Convict Guy (too long a story, you'll have to ask me one night on the porch), and wrote one of his most beautiful and poetic "program notes" in the midst of all the our gnashing and fumbling.  I learned a lot then (and in '84 too, another tough summer) about one of the things he was always trying to get across to us:  there is no "magic" just waiting to do all the work for you once you step into the Barn.  Just hard work, and sometimes real suffering.  

Mark really really struggled that summer, to the very end, and then his wife left him when he came back.  A double-whammy life-changer, and it's wonderful to see this, especially this summer.  I will track him down to say hey.  Thanks Robert.

cs