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Meeting the Ultimate Campus All-Star Or An Addendum to The Little Mermaid Story



By: Dina Epstein, Anne Lainer, & Nancy Perla

This story begins with an email. Within the text of this email were many short messages ­ personal notes added on as headers. The final note in the sequence read: "For anyone who ever heard me talk about how awesome Columbia University's phone mail system wasŠyou HAVE to hear this NPR piece." So, we dutifully followed the link. And we listened.

The NPR piece to which our friend was referring was a story heard on "This American Life." Throughout the fifteen or so minutes of the radio piece, we sat rapt as we listened to the tale of "The Greatest Phone Message In the World."

The gist of the story, (reported by Jonathan Goldstein with the help of his friend Josh Karpati, CC ı91) was this: a phone-mail message received by Columbia student Fred Schultz, from his mother, became "the defining moment" of the graduating class of 1990. The message, verbatim, is this: "Hi Fred. You and the Little Mermaid can go f*ck yourselves. I told you to stay near the phone. I canıt find those books‹you have other books here. It must be in La Jolla. Call me back. Iım not going to stay up all night for you. Buh-bye!"

Schultzıs mother explains that she had told Fred to wait by the phone for her call. But, Fred had not. Instead, Joan Schultz was greeted by her sonıs outgoing message: an audio recording from Disneyıs The Little Mermaid in which the mermaid Ariel sings "Part of Your World." Then, furious at her son, Joan heard the beep and let her emotions get the best of her.

In Goldsteinıs story, Fred Schultz remembered that he very nearly "pressed the delete button." Luckily, he didnıt. Schultz, using the beloved Rolm Phone system which allows message to be relayed en masse, forwarded it to a friend who, in turn, forwarded it to a friend, who, in turnŠwell, from there the message seemed to take on a life of its own. Soon the "Little Mermaid" message had thoroughly permeated the campus. With each forward, students would add on their own personal message, with the penultimate message stating grandly, "There comes a time when we hear the greatest phone mail message of all timeŠ"

The notorious message is reputed to have crashed the Rolm phone system (more than once), inspired a 12-track dance re-mix version, and made it into that yearıs Varsity Show. As Goldstein reported, the showıs finale included a kick-line of men in coconut brassieres and mermaid tails singing a chorus of Handelıs "Messiah" with the words "In La Jolla" in place of "Hallelujah." More than a decade later, Columbians interviewed for the story giggled at the mere mention of the words "Little Mermaid."

And, more than a decade later, when we finally heard the story, we were amazed. Having been at Columbia during the reign of Rolm, having graduated in 2001, we could not believe that we had never heard this hilarious nugget of Columbiana.

As the NPR story was making its rounds in our inboxes, we three, like Fred Schultz, knew we couldnıt just hit "delete." Instead, we did exactly the same thing as those Columbians did in 1990. Within minutes of receiving the email, we forwarded it to other friends. And cousins, and former neighbors. Basically, anyone we knew who had ever gone to Columbia. We continued to send it, adding our personal feelings about it, to record for history our impressions on a bizarre glimpse into the life of Fred Schultz.

Very quickly we realized that this voicemail message that had served as a central unifier for thousands of undergraduates at Columbia in the early 1990ıs, was doing the same thing for Columbia alums in the early part of the new millennium‹this time through email.

We felt stronger because we had now tied ourselves in with something so quintessentially Columbia. We felt unified. The story could end here. If it were to end here, it would still be a pretty good story. A nice tale with a happy ending‹friends reunited, old memories relived, a stronger connection to good Œole Alma Mater. It might even bring a tear to a sentimental alumıs eyes.

But the story does not end here. This ground-swelling of enthusiasm was not the end, it was, as Churchill might say (on much weightier matters, of course), not even the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.

As our enthusiasm grew, so did our interest. We fell in love with Jonathan Goldsteinıs prose, we developed crushes on Josh Karpati (at least one of us did), and we wanted to learn more about Fred. We Googled, we Friendstered, we cross-referenced, we shared the story with non-Columbia friends. It is at this point in the story that we start to sound crazy. Trust us, weıre not. In the scheme of things, our interest filled no more than an afternoon of procrastination. But, the story did linger on...

Then, one day we found a lucky break. A few months after the original email, just as the story was starting to fade from our memories, one of us received another link in one of our inboxes. As is often the case with email links, no one really knows who got it first or how it appeared, but it too was quickly disseminated. This time the link was to a page created by members of the class of 1990, dedicated to Fred and The Little Mermaid Story. And this time, the website contained a link to Fredıs own webpage. This is where our story gets interesting.

Fredıs website, a brightly colored, psychedelic-looking page, is dedicated to Fred, his music, and his presidential candidacy (for President of the United States, that is). Looking through the websites we noticed that Fred was pictured in a few different pictures on a few different days, in front of the same coffee shop in Venice Beach. Again, we did a bit of research, we squinted our eyes, we deciphered the name of the shop, we Googled again. And, we came up with an address.

Now, coincidentally (or was it a matter of fate?) the authors, friends since Carman, but now strewn across the country, had planned a small reunion trip to Los Angeles. We put Fred as one of our top priorities for the West Coast trip.

So, one Sunday we hopped in the car, armed with a map of Venice Beach, the name of a coffee shop, and high hopes for stumbling into an interview with the alum who had left the "Little Mermaid" mark on Columbia..

Within seconds of arriving at the coffee shop, we spotted a short man, wrapped in a Powder Puff Girls towel, a tie-dyed Buddha t-shirt, a straw cowboy hat, and sunglasses. He sure looked like Fred. But, could it really be this easy? We had expected an afternoon of disappointment over cups of coffee, realizing that showing up at a coffee shop hoping to meet someone you had heard once on the radio was a bit far-fetched. Could it really be that the person we had sought was right there exactly where we hoped to find him?

Timid and unsure of ourselves (and suddenly feeling very silly), we did not know how to approach this free spirit. We did not know if this was the person for whom we had been looking, we did not know if we had even made the right choice in coming to see him.

At first, we must admit, we were not exactly upfront about our intentions. We struck up a conversation. After a few minutes of chatting ("Oh, you used to live in New York? What were you doing there?" "You went to college there? Really? Which college?" "Columbia? What a coincidence, we went there too!"), we had to finally expose our true intentions. "Actually," we told him, "we knew who you were before we came here. In fact, we expressly came here to see you. You are Fred, of Little Mermaid fame! We want to interview you. Can we buy you a cup of coffee?"

Unfazed, Fred agreed to the interview, didnıt mind that we hadnıt been straightforward in our approach, and gladly accepted a cup of coffee (large, black).

As we sat down with Fred, at a table outside his favorite coffee shop (our instincts had obviously been right on that one), the three of us began asking questions, interjecting, vying for the attention of Fred Schultz, of Little Mermaid Fame.

Within seconds, we fell into a cool and comfortable conversation with Fred. We jumped from topic to topic, discussing Columbia, Rolm phones, the Core curriculum (yes, it really is the great unifier!), Fredıs interests in mermaids, philosophy, theology, the stock market, politics. The conversation hit its stride as we spontaneously broke into a joint rendition of "Part of Your World," the song that started this whole journey.

After two hours in the waning sunshine with Fred Schultz next to the Pacific Ocean, we left giddy, enlightened, and filled with Columbia pride. That night, over dinner with fellow Columbia alumni, we recounted the tale. The next morning, we called everyone we knew, adding another layer to the burgeoning saga of Fred Schultz, of Little Mermaid Fame.

As we thought about our adventure, we began asking ourselves, what is it about this story that excites us so much? Surely it meant more to us than it meant to the listeners of "This American Life," who probably thought it was just a humorous story involving some typical college students. Rather, the story allowed us to experience our ever-strong affection for Columbia. And the tale was so quintessentially Columbia. It was quirky. It involved the Rolm Phone system, the Varsity Show, and colorful characters. With Fred we chatted about dorm life and classes, realizing that not much had changed in the decade that passed between his and our graduation dates.

We soon decided that we could not let this story end with the three of us. We had stumbled into a great piece of Columbia lore which needed to be canonized in the annals of our schoolıs history.

So we are writing this piece with the hope that this story, and countless others like it, will continue to unify, touch, and make laugh generations of Columbians. As we write this down, we realize that we are placing ourselves in the great tradition of story-telling, the tradition that we, and past and future Columbians, encounter when introduced to Homer on our very first day of Lit Hum.

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