This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.

Alice in Alumniland

It’s been many years since I visited my alma mater, the University of Connecticut. I’m told it’s different now. However, when I leave one brisk fall morning to meet with two friends and do a walkabout on campus, I have no idea what kind of Alice in Wonderland adventure is waiting for me.

There’s a parking garage on campus now. Two, in fact. In my day it was catch-as-catch-can parking spots. Not many set aside for visitors. I drive toward North Garage and take a wrong turn. I’d take a wrong turn in my own driveway if that were possible. I go down a one-way road that didn’t exist in my day and end up behind craggy old buildings that did. No big deal. It’ll be a quick jaunt up another road to turn around. However, there’s a problem. A parade is going down the only road out. There are floats, costumed people, a marching band. Horns, hollering, and hoopla.

So now I’m down the rabbit hole of no-outlet roads and engineering studies buildings that I never saw as a student. I was a liberal arts kinda gal. I’m disoriented and disconcerted. There are no legal parking spaces and “Danger! High voltage!” signs everywhere. I park behind a post-apocalyptic-looking building. There’s chain link fencing around a sinister looking contraption. An air conditioning unit? A mini nuclear power plant? Who knows?

After I find my way to the visitor’s center (new!), I breathlessly explain to my friends why I’m late. We walk for a half hour then go to retrieve my car. But I can’t find it. The side streets with no outlets look all off kilter somehow. Or maybe that’s just me. I finally find my car near a sign that reads “24/7 Tow Zone.”

Nice.

I move my car to a legal spot and then we walk to the middle of campus. They’ve moved the school store and changed the library. The whole area is so rearranged and unfamiliar that I could be at any college anywhere. At the Student Union there’s a smoothie bar. A smoothie bar.

Curiouser and curiouser!

Everything is clean and posh looking. Even the freshman dorm dubbed “The Jungle” in my era looks good. No couches burning on the lawn. No students hanging out of the windows yelling things that include either the word keg or the f-bomb. The buildings seem to grin at me like Cheshire cats. They seem to say, as the cat did in the book, “I’m not crazy. My reality is just different from yours.”

It gets more surreal as we go down Storrs Road. My old haunt, Store 24, where I’d get dollar burritos at two in the morning, is gone.

Len, the creepy manager from Store 24 who would say to my goth roommate with the spiky hair, “I like yah hayah!” is gone.

Sugar Shack, with its chocolate-covered coffee beans (perfect for study nights), is gone.

These are all replaced by an entirely scrubbed and shiny downtown. A downtown.

My mind is reeling.

Then we come to East Campus where my friends and I lived for four years. A student, after we explain that we’re ancient alumni, lets us into our old dorm. Ah. That smell. The long hallways, the blocky wooden doors, the lounge with its large bay window and piano are there. The piano is still there.

We visit the doorways to our old rooms and take pictures like tourists from another country. One doorway opens and a young woman steps out, startled to see the three of us standing there. We apologize and explain. She walks us around the dorm so that we can trade then-and-now stories.

This is a different kind of surreal. Very familiar, yet it’s like falling through a mirror and landing on the other side. The same but not the same.

I drive back to my home through russet leaves and down windy roads I once traveled in a rundown Pontiac. Here is the road I now live on. Here is my kitchen, a stack of bills sitting on the counter. I, the alumni version of Alice, am out of Wonderland and back to my adult reality.

Juliana Gribbins is a writer who believes that absurdity is the spice of life. Write to her at jeepgribbs@hotmail.com.