Word: sam
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...when he did things like tell them shyly of a waitress at Brighams with whom he was madly in love (for two weeks, until she told him bluntly she never wanted to see him again), or when he decided to buy piranha (and then kept them in his room--Sam and Mark could hear him at night talking to them), or when he listened over and over again to a single passage from a Bartok concerto--well, it was hard to resist laughing a little...
...stopped telling the other two when he fell in love with anyone of whom they wouldn't approve. Sure, he got a little hard to take around exam time, when he constantly threatened to jump out the wimdow rather than write the last three pages of his paper, but Sam and Mark laughed that off, too, and cheered Todd up by starting waterfights or going out to Fathers...
That spring, they all decided to room together as sophomores. Neither Sam or Mark were heartless, and it would have been hard to tell Todd they didn't really feel he was one of them. Todd wasn't a bad kid, anyway, just a little more nervous than most...
...Neither Sam or Mark felt compelled to explore that nervousness, either. They were pretty well-adjusted themselves, and were a little repulsed by the idea of trying to delve into Todd's personal life. Besides, as Sam put it several years later, they were roommates, not lovers; it wasn't really their responsibility to figure out why the guy looked so unhappy...
Their sophomore year in Winthrop, Todd took a heavy course load, with five courses all in his field of concentration. Mark and Sam saw a lot less of him--he was always in the library. And when he emerged from the downstairs reading room in Cabot, all he did was complain about his work. Sam and Mark tried to persuade him to drop a course, but he just looked glum, talked about his future, and repeated his by-now well worn threat about jumping out the window. That spring, Todd took another heavy course load--only four courses this time...