When I read this story, told by one of Jim's friends from Florida, it really struck me, as it was clear that Jim must have had a fascination for Queen Elizabeth I (and why not, she was a redhead!:) The reason it stuck with me is that I have also had a fascination for her since I was a child, at which time I started reading everything I could find about her.

Elizabeth I was known as the Virgin Queen, as she refused to relinquish her reign to a husband, and never married. It is highly probable that she did in fact remain a virgin, as the risk of pregnancy was just too great. She had many suitors, for reasons both political and romantic, and being a passionate woman, I imagine she stopped just short of taking that risk with any number of men in her life. There were two "loves" of her life, one of which was Lord Essex, who was younger than herself, and whose passion for Elizabeth made him force her hand. When she would not relent and marry him, he committed treason. He lost his head rather quickly in the scheme of things and therefor, despite the intensity of their relationship, he is a fairly minor character in her long and eventful reign, and it would be difficult to remember him, unless one truly had a passion for this period of history. With that as background, this is the (short but amazing) story which so intrigued me, of the night Chris Kallivakos met Jim. (Jim and Chris became friends, later rooming together at Florida State) - laciefae

"A bunch of my friends came by. They were going to a party, and Jim was with them. I said I couldn't go because I had to write a term paper which was due the next day. I had to write this term paper on Lord Essex, and I hadn't done any research on it. I'd waited until the last minute, and I had only the two paragraphs about him which I'd gotten out of the encyclopedia. When I explained this to my friends, Jim said "Oh, Lord Essex? I know all about him."

"The other guys left and went to the party, and Jim sat down and wrote a term paper just from his recollection. I typed it up, and he made up a bibliography, just from memory. As it happens, the instructor the paper was written for had done her master's thesis on Elizabethan history."

Chris got a A on the paper Jim had written from memory.



Copyright 2002 by Chris Kallivakos, laciefae and Waiting-forthe-Sun.net