New World

In August 1963, I passed through a transformation.  I had spent the first eighteen years of my life in small town Oswego, New York.  Now I would enter a new world as a student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a big city.  

From my perspective, I had been a Jew living in a non-Jewish world (Oswego).  Now I would be Jew in a very Jewish environment (Penn and Philadelphia).

This Jewish perspective was not something put upon me by my peers (I never felt any animus or antisemitism).  It was put upon me by my parents who made me feel some kind of vague danger from the non-Jewish world.

There was a second element to this transformation.  I had been under the thumb of my mother who was a very controlling person.  She believed children lacked the ability to know what they should do given a choice.  Between adults and children, who would make a better decision?  

But, then this logic falls apart.  At eighteen with no experience, I was cast out, encouraged to leave home, go to a good university and start making decisions on my own.  Good luck!

However, from my perspective, it felt as if I was being released from prison.  Despite my lack of experience, I felt I was ready for the challenge.  I could do whatever I wanted (making quick decisions) even if, with 20-20 hindsight from fifty-five years into the future, what I wanted turned out to be not such a good idea...some times. 

As I recall, the period from my high school graduation to leaving for Penn (2 months) was one of planned isolation.  I basically abandoned my high school friends as if I was entering a new chapter of my life and had no room in it for them.  I would replace my old friends with new Jewish friends that would fulfill my Jewish identity.  Is there such a thing as having too many friends?

For the next twenty-five years, I did not realize what I had so easily and carelessly cast aside.  When I received an invitation to our class reunion in 1988, I came to the realization that I wanted to include my old life along side my new one.  But I got a punch in the gut when I arrived and discovered my best friend from the old days, Frank Ruggio, had died of cancer six months before.  However, I was able to reconnect with some of my old Oswego friends.  

Returning to August 1963, I remember being abandoned by my parents in my dorm room after dinner.  My two roommates (from Boston and Orlando) on the fifth floor of the Class of 1928 dormitory had not as yet arrived.  I was alone and lonely.  I was at the crossroads of my life and was not quite sure if I was adult enough to act like an adult.  

Then there was a knock on the door.  Another freshman from down the hall invited me to come to his room where others had gathered to shoot some bull.  I accepted and quickly started to feel I had successfully entered the new world I had been looking forward to.