Three Yellow Houses

 

I started college expecting to fill the general requirements, then settle into a vocal music major. I’d always received better marks in vocal performance than on keyboard. A week on campus changed my mind. All the vocal students I saw seemed paranoid and hypochondrial. They’d walk about with woolen scarves up to their chins. If anyone were to sneeze or cough in their presence, they’d hurry home to their humidifiers and their honey/lemon concoctions. So, I switched to piano pedagogy. Daddy used to say he had a similar epiphany at roughly the same point in his education. He’d been undecided about whether to focus on organic chemistry (which deals with carbon-hydrogen bonds) and inorganic chemistry (which involves mostly metals and minerals). He reached his decision when he learned about Adolf Butenandt, the chemistry student who discovered testosterone by boiling down thousands of gallons of male urine. Daddy knew right away he wanted nothing to do with that.