Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

When Alan started college at Beloit, he was assigned room 321 B. Some time during the early part of the year, someone added to it, and his room was labeled, "321 Blast off". Rarely did we see his room without other people in there. It was a combination self-serve restaurant, lounge, hotbox. Those kids would eat anything, so when we would stock Alan up on dried cuttlefish and gochujang, Korean instant ramen, or seaweed, it would disappear within days. Our parents and/or I would visit at least a couple weekends a month, usually taking a rag-tag group of friends along for dinner at Applebee's or the Chinese buffet. We got to meet Courtney, Leslie, Jack (Zack? Mom's accent made it hard to tell), Jared, Sam (briefly), Rui (how Mom spelled Louie), Rosie, and the rest of the gang.

Alan was in "piano class," where he would play duets with other students, and taking private lessons, but he never seemed to listen to classical music. He was into offbeat East Coast (or sometimes Midwest) hip-hop, by people like former Wu-Tang Clan members Rza and Gza and Das Racist.

To each his own, I guess.

While at Beloit, he kept up good grades and did well for himself despite all this. When some temporary social falling out led to missed classes, he found he had the rebound capacity of a wad of wet Kleenex (*splat*) and dropped out. But before that, he discovered a love for philosophy. Perhaps the most influential course for him there was on phenomenology, a course he described as "phenomenal." Somehow, when we talked about it, we would always end up singing:

Phenomena, doo doooooo doo doo-doo...

Since he wasn't able to bounce back, he had to rebuild. He moved in with Mom and Dad, started taking courses at MATC, and got himself back on track. Academically, despite the existential struggles that clearly tormented him, he was somehow able to keep on top of things. He had rediscovered his love of film, and decided to go to film school at Iowa. While this complicated my life quite a bit, I was happy for him to move into my house, and this ushered in our closest times since I graduated from high school.