I so inhabited the lead in Tennessee Williams’ one-act This Property Is Condemned, that I condemned myself to a bout of mono and spent the evening of the show in the infirmary.

There were movie moments, too—set pieces in real life that were overblown, theatrical gestures.

I remember throwing my drink at a flirtatious student bartender at a Hasty Pudding party and then waking up next to him the next day.

Or being caught kissing the wrong fellow in the Ibis room at the top of the Lampoon castle and watching him tumble headfirst down the stone stairs after my boyfriend slugged him.

The image that keeps resurfacing, however, is a sweet one, not sexy, sickly, or violent.

I was in a play called The Kitchen, by Arnold Wesker, again at the Loeb and directed by Peter Frisch. My part was that of a gum-cracking waitress and I chewed wads of Bazooka that I parked on my dressing table mirror when I wasn’t onstage.

One night, it was April I believe, we were surprised by a late snowstorm, and when I couldn’t find my gum to go back on after Intermission, a fellow cast member (the Chef in the play) beckoned me outside, and there he’d built me a snow bunny, with a wad of pink bubble gum for a nose.

It was a lovely courtship gesture, and perhaps my fondest memory of Harvard.