Mike Bibbo was another freshman who lived on the tenth floor of Pinchot Hall during my first year at Penn State. Imagine all the worst negative clichés of a frat boy and you’ll probably come pretty close to picturing Mike Bibbo. Because he was very tall and thin, someone gave him the nickname “Dildo”, but I’ll refrain from using it.

He and my roommate, Dave DeTullio, both pledged at Lambda Chi Alpha that year, so he was in our room quite a lot. Thus I got to hear him complaining about all the girls he had bedded, though I use the term “bedded” advisedly as many of these trysts actually took place behind the bushes, a suitable bed not being available. I remember one girl that he was seeing for awhile, although as I say all he did was complain about her, because according to him, she hadn’t had any experience in high school and now she came to college and decided to be promiscuous, but she didn’t know the first thing about making out. According to him.

But Mike Bibbo was nasty with everyone. Where most folks indulged in good-natured ribbing, Bibbo always aimed for the jugular.

In those days I still had thoughts that I might become a writer of fiction (not yet having come to the realization that I had no talent for character development or plotting), so I often jotted down notes of ideas for stories or novels in a notebook that I kept in my desk.

One day our room was filled with at least a half dozen guys from the floor—that would have included me, my roommate Dave, Mike Bibbo, Ed Stutz, Tony (I forget his Italian last name), and a fellow nicknamed Bull. There may have been one or two others. Anyway Bibbo was sitting at my desk and he started snooping in the drawers and he found the notebook. I tried to stop him from opening it, but to no avail. I tried to prevent him from reading from it out loud but he wouldn’t listen.

So there he was reading out loud some idle notes I had written about an idea for a novel based on life in the dorm. I had included some capsule descriptions of several of the guys including a fictionalized version of myself and a couple of the people in the room. Needless to say it was embarrassing in the extreme, especially because I had written a particularly unflattering description of Bull, and Bull had no choice but to stand there as Dildo (what the hell) was reading it out loud to the group.

There were a few other incidents, but I think you get the picture.

I had no great desire to see Mike Bibbo again, but I was curious as to what may have become of him. When I did a search I found a Michael A Bibbo, born on Jun 21, 1949 – died on Oct 15, 1997 at the age of 48.

Yeah, that’s probably him.