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Shortly after going away to college, a good friend of mine named Dave, who many people were fortunate enough to meet, woke up one mourning draped in nothing but a white cloth shower curtain. And much like most other mornings as freshmen in the dorms, the fifteen to twenty of us close friends who were actually awake in time, would all go out to breakfast together in the cafeteria. After a good solid meal of laughing hysterically at Dave and the events of the night before, we quickly realized the importance of this time in our lives, and vowed not to forget the great times we had together. From that day on, anytime a great moment came along, the detailed stories of our lives would be simplified into a short phrase, and written on that same white cloth shower curtain, which now became known simply as "the Memory Sheet". "The Memory Sheet" still circulates between the people I lived with at college, and now contains well over 400 phrases from our time together, and brings us all to laughter everytime. |
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The significance of this story to today, is that I sat on the couch one day realizing that, despite how much everyone has heard me complain about being in Minnesota, I could not ignore, nor did I want to ignore, the many good times which I have had here, and the many friends I have made here for life. So with that in mind, I sat down and put together a list of phrases that would end up on my "Minnesota Memory Sheet." |
| Eden Prairie Police Dept/ Anti-party Strike Force 4, Us 7 |
| Skull and crossbones stripmarking: after running a scenario, my advisor proceeded to help me with stripmarking I must have missed in the 7110. |
| Friday afternoon class: these sessions, which brought us great moments such as:
The funniest classtime, in my opinion, with the OPM study session, which had us asking how much they were paying at McDonald's
Todd's question about a mechanic throwing a jet engine on a Cessna in his garage
Planning each week, for the trip to Rio Bravo
Strangling the parrot
Randy changing his cloths at lunch to go to his friend's house, I believe his name was Jake
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| Screw Purdue: these were the cries from Golden Gopher's fans at the Metrodome, as eleven people from our class, which I am fairly sure have never even been to South Lafayette Indiana, became the biggest fans of the Boilermakers', football team, to annoy the hometown homecoming crowd. |
| The rock bottom through the coffee table |
| It's all good: this quote needs no explanation, we all know who I am talking about. This man brought us more to smiles than anything else in this state, because no matter how bad things got, It's all good. Yet he still found time to watch more movies in this state than I have in my entire life, despite not having a T.V. |
| DENIED: one of our first days in lab, Todd, with no other way to tell an aircraft that he was unable to honor his request, screamed denied loud enough for every person in the lab to hear. |
| The nicknames: some of the best including:
"Mad Dog" Karlberg
"T-Rex" Treena Mathis
Phil "Wild Card" Cardy
Sandbags/ "black death"
Wyatt/ Bleeding Kansas
Cat burglar
Borderline
Texan
Predator
Puppy dog
Donkey Kong
Shaggy from Scooby Doo
B Love 6
The thousand and one names we came up with for RupeDog's first born
Easy Drinkin'
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| My birthday party: the two day event, which I am not even going to try to put into words, because they just would not do it justice. If you weren't there, you wouldn't understand, and the pictures have been forbidden on school grounds. |
| Thanksgiving in the casino: no better place I can think of to spend thanksgiving. |
| The lady from Epanema: One day I sat there and watched Hatcher, the best guitarist I have ever seen, pick up his guitar after just hearing a song on a commercial, a proceeded to play it to a T. |
| Gifts for Mike: this was one of the greatest shows of class as I have every seen out of a group of people. |
| Randy's merging targets |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, voodoo chicken: This afternoon exposed us to Clinton's strange eating habits, and the server, asking him after eating dessert first, then soup, then the main course, if he could get him an appetizer or something. |
| Donkey Kong's 39 wings, Randy's 7 hamburgers, and easy drinking's 67 beers never hurt nobody |
| The "chillin' the most" flag: The flag which was flown proudly over our front door everyday. |
| Non-radar/ strip burning party: this evening brought us such interesting events as James asking the Police if they would take a picture with us, highlights from the surveillance camera, a new way to stop a ceiling fan, Brad's neon green shirt, which oddly we haven't seen since, Molly, and our buddy A-ha. |
| This is my house: no sooner than twenty minutes after given an analogy that the sector we are working is our house, advisor Randy told Guy that he had a plane which was wrong altitude for direction of flight; without missing a step, Guy fired back loudly with "this is my house, and I can do what I want in my house, Randy." |
| Human Factors: the class, which brought us the term situational awareness, which we use frequently, but not usually in the context of air traffic control, the class which also left us all dead in the dessert, brought us Brad's four clap's, and in the same exercise, brought us Guy's famous moment, which I believe the rest of the class can help me with. |
| What if, what if, what if.. after getting fed up with repeated what if questions, Mad Dog fired back with "what if, what if, what if," and then proceeded to ask us a "what if" question about our aunt possibly being our uncle. |
| Grandpa's birthday party: One Friday, the twenty of us, or so, in the class who are related, all took our grandfather to Rio Bravo for his birthday. The only problem is that none of us there were related, the gentleman in question is no one's grandfather in the class, and his birthday is not until at least March. |
| The five minute beer order: this left me laughing as a lady shot her head around at Champp's, asking Danny, "you're not from around here, are ya?", proceeded to say that it took him almost five minutes to order a beer, then continued to imitate him; " I need a Beeeer." |
| Psuedo pilot with Blackwell: between his singing, his interesting was to call traffic in sight on a Faulkner 27, and him ringing the emergency phone line, just to say "if that's for me, I'm not here," this man took the worst part of the day and made it the best. |
| And last, but not least Section 117, seat 10: the seat number of the poor, middle aged, unsuspecting Golden Gophers fan who had the misfortune running his mouth to, what I would imagine, one of only two Ohio State Buckeyes fans in the entire state of Minnesota, who then chased him and his three friends from the bar. |
| Each person in the class who shares these memories, realize that we made the best of our time here in Minnesota. And as we laugh together here today, it is important to note that the members of this class were all strangers when we arrived, and came from all walks of life; In just one perfect example, eleven of us went out for lunch one afternoon, and as the server came around to check our I.D.'s, he had to think at least one of the I.D.'s must have been fake as ten states were represented at the table, but any strangers to the situation would have sworn that we had been friends for life. The students of this class came from as far west as the islands of Hawaii, east as New York, south as Florida and Texas, and as north as right here in Minnesota, yet we all pulled together as needed to help get through this time as one; we have helped together, we have lived together, we have spent countless hours in the classroom and lab together, and we have most definitely partied together, but most importantly, we learned together, and look to our futures and careers which many of us will be spending together. |
| I would like to thank the students and instructors of the MARC program for making my time away from home as pleasant as they could, giving me the opportunity to speak here today, and to do the one thing that my close friends know is the motivation behind my life, which is to make my father proud. I wish everyone the best of luck. |
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- B.C. Hanlon
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