SharpNose's Journal: An Elvira Postscript

Some time after the Summer of Hell, Rich (Elvira's short-term boyfriend who I had written to after he left for his co-op quarter in the interest of striking a "gentleman's agreement" only to have him write back and tell me that Elvira was "too emotional" and "God speed, dude"), a good friend of ours whom I'll call MGK, and I formed a band for an on-campus event. As far as what all went on regarding Elvira, between Rich and me it was all water under the bridge. Elvira and I were still having fairly frequent contact but that contact wasn't at all exciting. Frustrating, yes.

Anyway, our band needed a name, and in a flash of brilliance, I came up with one: ELAB (it was really something else, but I'm obscuring it for a reason that will be apparent shortly). I did it as a self-satisfying joke - a little bit of revenge on Rich and Elvira both. The only thing was, MGK - who had a tendency to be real hyper at times, which was fairly entertaining because his creativity would kick in as a result - kept coming up to me and saying, hey, I've got a great name for the band, and I'd go, no, no, let's keep ELAB...this went on a few times.

Finally, it got to the point where it seemed pretty obvious that I was hanging on to the name for some specific reason, so I told MGK that ELAB was an acronym for Elvira [her last name] Alumni Band. He thought this was hysterical and once he was in on the joke, he was 100% for keeping the ELAB name. I did say to him, look, don't tell Rich, okay? I don't know how he'd take it.

Of course, MGK told Rich about the ELAB name probably the very next time he saw him. Thankfully, Rich took it well, and I have a picture of the three of us playing with a green and white ELAB sign MGK had made prominently displayed.

As I recall, Elvira was a bit ambivalent about being commemorated in that fashion. Well, she's REALLY commemorated in these blog entries NOW, ain't she?