No. 721 – The Colony of Slippermen

Performer: Genesis

Songwriters: Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford

Original Release: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Year: 1974

Definitive Version: None

When I finally found The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, it marked the first time that I had heard this song all the way through. I had known it for years before then as part of a medley of old songs that Genesis played at the end of their shows, as featured on Three Sides Live. I also saw them do it in 1984.

An aside: I love how the first line, I wandered lonely as a cloud, was an homage to Wordsworth’s poem of the same name. I still can hear Dr. Herzog reciting that line in English 18 my freshman year at Wabash.

The beginning of 1987, when I was listening to this album a lot, was a dicey time. After surviving Northwestern’s Intro to Journalism, I was on shaky ground at Medill. The next quarter would make or break my future as a journalist.

The Saturday before I was to return to start winter quarter started with me and Beth getting into a fight over football. Beth loved the Cleveland Browns, while I had been a die-hard Chicago Bears fan all the way since the last year when they won the Super Bowl. No, I’m just kidding. I’d been a fan since Walter Payton started playing in the mid-Seventies. (He was and probably always will be my favorite football player of all time.)

Anyway, the Browns were going into overtime while the Bears game was getting started. I wanted to watch the Bears, so instead of just waiting till the Browns game was over, like a good boyfriend, I went into the kitchen at the condo to watch by myself. Actually, there was more to it than that, but I don’t recall what exactly my snit was over. But sure as I’m writing this, it was because of something stupid I said.

Regardless, the game was going well—I particularly remember when the Bears scored their first touchdown to tie the game and going nuts in the kitchen—and at halftime, Beth wanted to get dinner. She wanted White Castle, which I didn’t like, but OK.

In the grand tradition of my family not wanting to jinx anything sports-wise, I stayed in the kitchen to watch the Bears game. Can you believe that? I’m 22 with my 20-year-old girlfriend in another room. Geez, is it any wonder she broke up with me little more than two months later? I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The game started to turn in the second half, and the Redskins took the lead after an interception by Doug Flutie. This was particularly vexing, because I had been in the meager pro-Mike Tomczak anti-Flutie contingency for weeks. I won’t bore you with the details at this time, but I thought my man T-zak was getting a raw deal in the Chicago media.

By midway through the fourth quarter, I knew it was over and switched off the game. I wasn’t feeling well, and Beth thought it was time to set the second half of our last day before I headed back to Northwestern into motion. So we went to—I kid you not—the nearby Lion’s Den for some adult video entertainment. (Beth was into that; I was into encouraging the said behavior.)

While Mom slept upstairs, we snuck into the den, put a little visual stimulation on the TV before acting out what we were watching. When we finished, I felt better for a bit. But something wasn’t right. I had to go to the bathroom, repeatedly. We watched a little more of the movie and did some more acting out. Again, I felt better … briefly.

But I went downhill fast, and before long, we were up in my bedroom. I was under the covers shaking with chills while Beth read bedside, assuming my psychosomaticism was acting up. When the inevitable feeling crashed over me, I sprinted to the bathroom. I went to throw up, but nothing came up.

What happened, however, was an intense pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was like my stomach had just been crushed. I screamed out in agony … and that brought everything up.

Well, that was enough for Beth and Mom, now awake. “We’re taking you to the hospital.” The next 24 hours was a blur. All I remember was that in the emergency room at Riverside, which was the nearest hospital, it was coming out of me at both ends; I was admitted; I watched a bit of the NFL playoffs on TV the next day; I slept most of the day; and Dad came to visit me at some point.

The thing I remember the most, however, was that when I woke up the first time after I was admitted, Beth was in the chair next to the hospital bed. I was glad she was there when I woke up, and thinking about it now, that I didn’t appreciate Beth more when we were together was nothing less than pathetic.

Anyway, I was in the hospital for another full day before being released on Tuesday. So what had happened? Well, I didn’t have White Castle’s for more than a decade after that, and I always said that the Bears’ game made me sick, but the truth was that I had an epic bought of gastroenteritis, or at least that’s what the doctors said.

The result was that after resting at home, I missed the entire first week of classes. I called friends at Northwestern, who were able to relay the message that I was in the hospital to my professors and collect syllabi and notes, but I was starting the most crucial educational quarter of my life a week in the hole. How’s that for an inauspicious beginning?