MY TIME WITH KATRINA


I’ve decided to tell the whole story of my time with Katrina back when I was in college. I think this way I may make better sense of the whole experience. It was a long time ago, but some parts come back to me as if it were last year.

I

I was a junior at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y. I was the lead backstroker on the swim team when the school was very competitive in the sport. The school year was scheduled differently then. The academic semester did not end with the Christmas break. You returned in early January for three more weeks, the semester ended and then there was one more week off called “intersession” before the next semester started. Coach requested his top swimmers stay at school during intersession where he conducted 2-a-day workouts to prepare us for the heart of the season.
It was Friday, late afternoon after the final workout of the week. The weather was cold and snow was predicted for that evening. The weather fit my mood; I was very discouraged. Despite my hardest efforts, my swim times were slipping, and, even worse,
My grades were falling badly. If ever I was willing to give my life over to someone else to call the shots, now was that time.
I lived at the fraternity where my room and board had been paid for the full year ahead of time. Accept for the President and two others, the place was pretty much empty for the week. I didn’t want to go back there yet, so instead I was at Frank’s apartment where he was having an informal kind of gathering. Frank was a good friend of mine. He had been a senior swimmer on the team when I was a sophomore and we had really hit it off. Right after graduation he married his sweetheart, Helen. He had been accepted into Law School and they got an apartment off campus.
Also present at Frank’s place were a couple of Helen’s grad student friends, including Katrina, and one of Frank’s fellow law students. With each of us holding a glass of wine, I found myself sitting with and talking to Katrina. My first impression of her was that she was somewhat overweight and kind of plain looking in that washed out grad student kind of way. Her hair was jet black and fairly short. She had a brightness about her that made talking to her very easy. She was also a good listener. During this time I told her why I felt so blue. She did say that I did need cheering up and she could help.
Katrina was three or four years older than I. She labored as a graduate assistant and was working on her doctorate in early education. Her dissertation concerned the learning styles of second graders. One thing I didn’t know then would become important for all that would follow. She was into hypnosis. At one point, for some reason, she hypnotized some of the children in her control group. There was a big fuss and her Department wanted expel her from school. Her faculty advisor was just able to save her position but told her that if he heard that she had used hypnosis for any reason while she was still his student, he would lead the charge to have her dismissed!