So I'm in the barbershop today for a haircut, and it's just me and some young kid and two barbers. Usually when I see young guys there, it's the underwear-sticking-out-of-the-pantshole types with lots of attitude and little brains, but this kid was getting an obviously military-style buzz cut and was being polite to the barber. Place is small, so you hear every conversation, and the kid's talking about the Army unit in which he serves (a battle unit that has been deployed several times), his fiance (a girl from Ohio he met in Pittsburgh), and his planned discharge in three months which will be followed by his wedding. I walked over to the kid to thank him for serving our country and offered to pay for his haircut. I asked him how he met his fiance, and he tells me she was a student at Pitt when he was in school. Of course I told him that changed everything. Made him laugh. He says, "Hey, I didn't go to Pitt, I went to a school called Duquesne." Oh, I said, I've heard of it. Gave him the short bit of ancient history, Nixon there my freshman year, yadda yadda. Kid says, "Wanna see something?" Lifts up the barber smock and underneath he has a Red & Blue Crew shirt. I asked him if he went to games, and he says, "Of course. My freshman roommate was a guy named Damian Saunders." Also said Damian is going to be in his wedding.

I live out in Western NJ, where few people I've met have ever actually heard of Duquesne. Most of the smarter kids get into UConn, Lehigh, Lafayette and Syracuse. The kid, the soldier, also said I was the first Duquesne grad he ever knew about in our town. My daughter knew him in HS.

I did end up paying for the kid's haircut. If anyone's on the board who's a recent graduate (he said he graduated from DU in 2010), he has a similar name to the DeNiro character in "Analyze This."