The Hube

October 5, 2007, 2:30 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Josh J  | 1 Comment

A couple weeks ago I received a call from a student at Houghton College, working the phone lines for the Houghton Fund. She shared with me that she was a freshman and proceeded to go through her scripted routine designed to extract money from me.

One of the first psychological tricks of her routine was to ask me what my favorite memory of Houghton was. I must confess, I was caught a bit off guard. How to sum up four of the greatest years of my life thus far into one memory? I hemmed and hawed rather unimpressively, grasping at straws.

Then she moved onto her next selling point — how Houghton is still impacting students. For this portion she tried to tell me what Houghton meant to her. I tried to listen but I just kept thinking, “Wait, you’ve only been there for three weeks! And you have to call alumni and try to tell them what Houghton is? That’s hilarious!”

I decided not to share my amusement for fear of embarrassing the poor girl. She did a nice job. I made a donation.

As luck would have it, a week later I received a visit from one of my college roommates, someone I’d not seen in five years, the one and only Hubie Hostetter. I had a chance to redeem my earlier favorite memory debacle, as we sat recounting all the things we missed about Houghton.

We miss intramural sports, be it soccer, basketball, team handball, or especially inner-tube water polo. We sure didn’t win many games, but our teams always had great camaraderie, and game night was always a highlight of the week.

We miss meal times. Some people couldn’t stop complaining about the food, but it sure was nice having someone prepare me three meals a day, all I could eat, with plenty of variety. And in my mind’s eye I can still look around the table and see the familiar cast of characters.

We miss our radio show on WJSL. We often dreaded going in, unsure of what we were doing or if anyone was listening, but always came out smiling. We’d get calls from guys in the dorm and all over the county, making song requests and trying to answer the weekly trivia question.

We miss the Shen Olympics. We miss inside jokes. We miss our Bible studies. We miss learning.

Hubie was only able to stay a few hours. We just sat in my living room, catching up and looking back. I don’t think we stopped laughing the entire time.

I sure do miss that guy.


Comments

1 Comment to “The Hube”

  1. Chloe on October 5th, 2007 5:32 pm

    This is why someday I’ll take over the Houghton Fund, rewrite every script, and market it to potential employees as a way to get a boy/girlfriend. “It happened to me! That means it could happen to you!”

    By the way, Josh, you’d make a great Houghton Fund minion. Interested?

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