2018-08-23 Cincinnati
Happy Anniversary Part 5
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Our Romance Part I: Un-courtship: February 1971 to 18 August 1977
(continued from 2018-08-22)
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July 31, 1977 – Aug 18, 1977
I spent my first night back in North America at my aunt’s and uncle’s house in Mendham, NJ. Of my dozens of friends and relatives to write, whom did I choose? Lawson Wulsin. Yep, I finally answered the 8-page letter he had sent before he went to Cameroon. I sincerely thought I was merely seeking sympathy from someone who might also understand the culture shock that wasn’t at all what I expected culture shock to be (disdain at the conspicuous consumption of Americans, guilt about my own material excesses, anger at the ubiquitous social, racial, and economic injustice, confusion about how to rectify injustice and promote collaboration, etc etc etc).
The culture shock of that night was the first, but not the last, time that my overseas adventures failed to impress my parents or others. I was so focused on my own experiences and changes and growth, I didn’t recognize that others had had their own unique experiences and changes and growth.
Lawson was back in Cincinnati, and responded to my letter with an invitation for us to get together. He offered to hitchhike to Cleveland to see me!
He wrote that he would bring stories and pictures from Cameroon, a bottle of Liebfraumilch (a reference to the wine we shared at his apartment in 1975), and “a little something else.”
(Mom told me later that when Dad read Lawson’s card, he told her, “Lawson better keep his ‘little something else’ in his pants.”)
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Our Romance Part II: Courtship
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August 19, 1977
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To be continued…
VicWulsin 