Letterman tickets? Please don't leaf me behind
By Michael Koolidge


Being a senior in college, last Thursday night was, in a sense, my final Halloween as a youth. It was my last year to really stretch the label "kid"— kid being defined as still having "school nights," still worrying about pop quizzes and still putting "student" down in the occupation box on applications for new credit cards.

I had two options on this final All Hallow's Eve, this last fringe of my youth. I could either go to the Middle East club and see Luscious Jackson, a distinctively older, "cooler" activity, or I could go to a school-sponsored Halloween party that would likely be populated with hundreds of barely post-pubescent freshmen. I couldn't get a Luscious Jackson ticket, so fate brought me to the Halloween party.

What I found at the Fuller Building on Commonwealth Avenue that night was a swarm of anxious, happy kids, every one of them in costume, dancing and having fun. I was transported back in time to an elementary school gymnasium where fellow kids in Smurf costumes bobbed for apples, girls dressed as Raggedy Ann whispered in corners and "Monster Mash" echoed off the walls.

I was nostalgic— and only 21. The innocence of the Boston University Masquerade was occasionally interrupted by the drag queens and a leather-bound dominatrix asking for the time, but the aura of innocence remained.

Sure, most of the people came for the same reason as me: a raffle for David Letterman tickets. But they came. Everyone was really enjoying themselves.

I saw quite possibly the happiest person I know there. She was dressed as a tree, like the cute redheaded girl in a third-grade school play. Her face was painted green, and her branches smacked witches and devils en route to the punch bowl. She was her normally glowing self, until she won a pair of tickets. And then she was in the third grade again, running around and cheering like she had just won a Strawberry Shortcake lunch box in the school spelling bee.

But wait! She made a promise— a promise she might not have meant to make. The tree overheard someone promise me the ticket if they were to win, as they already had plans for Friday. She probably said to herself, "What a sweet thing to do," and being the kind person she is, made the same promise to me.

It was a sweet thing to do.

The realization hit her on her second high-speed circumvention of the room. "Uh-oh. There's Mike," she thought. She hadn't thought she'd actually win— there were hundreds of other people at the dance. But she did win.

She had plenty of friends who knew her better and deserved the ticket more than me; her sister, for one, would love to go, she surmised. But she'd made a promise, and it was not in the tree's nature to break promises.

Naturally, I relieved the tree of her vow, but the classic battle ensued. It was the best kind of battle, when two people's intentions are both good but somehow conflict.

"Take it, please, I promised you," she told me.

"No, I can't. Give it to your sister," I replied.

"No, I insist."

"No, I insist."

I stood my ground, and after a couple of minutes of arguing, she finally said she would give the ticket to her sister.

But her sister couldn't go.

We saw each other the next day, and she gave me the ticket. Needless to say, I was thrilled to death. I was one of the few who got to see the "Late Show" at BU in person, but not because I knew someone from CBS, worked for the university or had camped out on the steps of Tsai for 12 hours.

I got a ticket because I happened to be sitting next to an abnormally kind tree at an innocent Halloween party in the last year I could still technically call myself a "kid."

Thanks, El. I owe you a Strawberry Shortcake lunch box.