i’m a frat boy.
pi kappa pi.
never heard of it? well, there’s a reason. the school i went to, lee college (now a university), had fraternities and sororities that were birthed at the school and not part of a national organization.

and my fraternity was the first new one in 25 years, the third on campus.
i was in the second group of guys to get in. (i know that was like three different numbers in those two sentences, but there’s kind of a numbers thing going on here.)

at the time, the other two fraternities on campus seemed–to me–like homogenous groups, with each guy seeming like a clone of the other, with subtle variations. at least that’s what it looked liked from the outside.
i didn’t fit either one.

but pi was different.

they had all different kinds of guys. jocks, academics, musicians, super serious guys, jokers, extroverts, introverts.
you couldn’t look at the club and easily identify one time of guy.
and that’s what really appealed to me.

i wanted to be a part of it.
i wanted a piece of the pi.

i’ve never been a joiner/bandwagon kind of guy. i’ve always been on the outskirts. and i’ve never had a ton of guy friends. but i wanted to be a part of that.
so i went for it.
and they picked me.

and in the course of the two years i was part of pi, i made some of the best friends i’ve ever had. the kind of people who still show up at a wedding or a funeral.
the kind that are always a phone call away, even if we don’t know the intricacies of each other’s everyday lives.

it saved me.
i was a lost boy.
alone.
it went beyond a club, and became family.

so this weekend, i am going to celebrate 25 years of pi at homecoming weekend at Lee, and my piece of it in the late 1980s.
i’ll celebrate how a group of misfits helped me fit into college.
and gave me a place that i will always call home.

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