Note: My short-lived attendance at Ricks College in the small town of Rexburg, Idaho twenty years ago was a defining stage of my life. Mostly for unpleasant reasons. Taking an extremely impulsive anarchist skate punk from California and putting them in the Rexburg of 1986, what can you expect? My being an 18-year-old with the maturity of a 9-year-old didn’t help, either. But it was in Rexburg that I fell in love with photography and abandoned my academic career to follow my passion.

These entries are written from the journals I kept when I was 18. Of course, at 38 today, I do not advocate any of the illegal activity discussed here. -Trent

Friday, October 10, 1986

Today was President Christianson’s innauguration. All classes after noon were canceled. Obviously, my last class was at 11:00. I went sleepily to Composition and then came back to #20. I missed Psychology though. Newswriting was uneventful, but Erin told me about the “water bottle leaning on the door” trick. Of course, water is a little plain. I’m thinking we need to fill the bottle with something a little more extreme. So during our D&D sessions, eating pizza and guzzling cokes and mountain dew, we’ve been “filling” a Gatorade bottle. Look out, R.A.
I ate a quick lunch and came back to #20. We played D&D until 5:30. Then I went up to eat after dropping Ray and Tom off at “Vid-wich”. You know, you couldn’t make up some of the names of the small businesses here that try to cater to the college kids here. Der Pizza Bomb is another one. It’s only a matter of time before they’re out of business.
When I went back to pick up Ray and Tom, they weren’t there. I went to look at Adventureland, the arcade we’re always hanging out at. They weren’t there either. I played a few games of “Jailbreak” and “Pack Rat” and came back to #20. It was cloudy and windy today.
Ray’s apartment was going to have a video party but no one came so after watching the “A-Team”, we played D&D again. I took a break halfway through and got a pizza at “Circle K.” Then I went back to DM’ing the Temple of Elemental Evil. At about 12am we heard a whole bunch of sirens going. We followed a cop out to the bark factory but didn’t see anything good. Then we played D&D until about 2am.