Do you remember your first days of college – I do. We were divided up into groups for orientation. In charge of each set of freshmen was an older student. The leader of my group was a sophomore education major who introduced herself as Michelle. I looked her over as we learned everyone's names and was happy that her blue orientation leader T-shirt was somewhat clingy. Her lightly tanned legs were also distracting, and they kept my attention as we started to play kindergartenish games, more for the purpose of learning everyone's name than anything else.
I remember at one point, I had to go and get a drink of water. When I came back, everyone was paired up playing Leap Frog. "Why," I thought to myself, "do we have to play these embarrassing games."
Suddenly, my arm was jerked sideways, and I was starring into Michelle's brown eyes. "You don't have a partner," she said playfully as a smirk spread across her face. I was rather nervous and embarrassed at this point, but I remember looking as she bent over in front of me. Her jean shorts pulled tight around her hips, and her shirt rode up her back. I jumped over her…
___________________________
I was walking into the school's theater for the second time during orientation weekend. It was a fairly small, private college, but through donations from alumni, they had a built a large auditorium. The last of the parents helping the students move in had left yesterday, and all of the new freshmen were waiting for the final day of orientation to end.
As the lights dimmed over the audience, the head of the orientation ran out from behind the dark blue curtain. "Well, have you had fun this weekend?" he shouted.
Thinking back on the short programs they had used to let us get to know our fellow students, I agreed (with everyone else) that I had.
The orientation leader continued, "We have one more section of our orientation before dismissing you back to the dorms. May I present your host for this evening, Mr. Victor Lloyd."
The orientation leader left the stage into the audience as another man, dressed casually in jeans and a blue T-shirt, slipped out from behind the curtain. He held up his hand to the light round of clapping, "Thank you. I know this isn't much of a sports school, but I did notice you have a cheerleading squad here. I've asked them for their help this evening, so will they come on out." He raised his arm to direct those of us in the audience to the side of the stage where four energetic girls came cartwheeling and bouncing out in white and blue cheerleading outfits.
Victor continued, "I hope you all have a magical first year at school, and just to make sure you do, I'm going to start it off with a little magic." He turned to the cheerleaders standing in a clump next to him. "I thought there was one more of you?" he questioned.
An attractive blonde cheerleader answered, "Michelle, she's not out here yet."
Victor asked, "Are you the captain of the squad?"
The blonde nodded, "I'm Stephanie."
"Well we can't wait for late people." He turned to us, "that's a valuable college lesson for your classes as well." Victor pointed at the blue curtain and it was pulled open. Backstage, there was complete darkness. Addressing Stephanie he said, "How about you four go backstage and one of my assistants will tell you what to bring out." The cheerleaders disappeared into the darkness.
Victor began talking to the audience, "I heard before I came out that you enjoyed the orientation. Let's thank the orientation leaders again then." The auditorium became filled with enthusiastic clapping.
As the applause died out, Victor turned backstage. The cheerleaders came forward pushing a long, narrow, metal table with a set of padded boards standing about five and a half feet above the surface in the vague outline of a person with several metal and leather cuffs fastened to the boards. Lying on the table was what appeared to be two gigantic steel blades. Even the table itself looked odd, with a crank just off center. The table was divided in the middle, and each half had a set of four legs underneath set upon wheels. The only thing that seemed to hold the table together was the clasp that you could see in front, and as the girls turned the table in a circle, the identical one in back.
"I'm rather proud of this contraption," Victor stated. "Let me point out a few of its main features. The backboard here," he hit the red padding with the palm of his hand, "is divided first of all in half from the top down to the table's surface. If you can see the crack between the two tables, it's even with that. As you can see each half of the table has only a few inches of board width, but it stands high above it." Then he motioned about halfway up the boards, "Each half of the boards are divided into an upper and lower section." He lowered his hand to the large steel hand crank that resembled those found on early cars, which hung underneath the table. "This crank controls these boards." He