Musings from Crown Alumni

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Firstly I must recount a different feeling than Lynnea concerning my graduate experience thus far. I think I would prefer her place in knowing that I am surrounded by like-minded individuals who have not only an intellectual but also a social aptitude that comes to light in various meetings, but instead I find myself thinking that I should be a TA instead of this PSCO-like bumbler that can't find his way around the copy room (I watched him for fifteen minutes today while I was finishing up twenty-five pages of reading on the use of the word democracy prior to 1789 in every country in Europe). I nearly fell asleep in my "grader" class, so I don't know how the people feel that are actually in the class for a grade. I paid $81 for a semester membership to the on-campus athletic facilities to make sure I avoid that heart-attack coming for my 23rd birthday, and bought my University of Montana decale that is apparently a right of passage from just looking around my apartment-building parking lot. I don't feel like I've taken a step up yet, and this is from Crown we're talking. So, maybe I'll excel, or maybe I'll simply lower myself to meet the standards that surround me. We have yet to see.
Oh, and I must be wary of what I write here, because my brother apparently reads the blogger now, and that's completely wonderful, but then he tells my parents stories that I for some reason or another had left out of our conversations. Thankfully my mom lost all steam when trying to remember that the girl I met was from Bulgaria, and so I felt the negative impact was yet minimal, but the following stories probably could have futher-reaching consequences. Actually, for those of you reading from the fairer sex, please, if you have any positive thought or disposition concerning my moral and spiritual standing, stop reading at the *** and begin once again if I put another set somewhere further down the page. For the rest of you with a well-developed poor opinion of me, read at your own discretion, and please think none the worse of me for that which I have no control over. To my fellow male compatriots, you will understand... and maybe you'll hate me, or be jealous, or both. Kyle told me.... well, I'll explain what Kyle said after we get this thing going.
***
(If you're female and still reading this, please, for the sake of your general opinion of men, quit now)
Yesterday was of course Labor Day, the official end of summer, and there are several activities that one could associate with such a celebration. My form of celebration was sitting in my living room reading Wordsworth, getting myself mentally prepared for the school week and enjoying the quiet ambiance left in the wake of an absent roommate. Mid-afternoon I heard some commotion out back, directly below my living room window, and so, being the curious soul that I am (some people call it nosy or "stalkerish", but I find it a necessity to know what's going on, for legal purposes more than anything), I find that my downstairs neighbors, the ones that I ate dinner with so many monthes ago, well, there they are, right below me. Now all summer I had peered out my back window, realizing that these girls had lounging chairs that moved regularly, enough so that I assumed that they spent time on their back porch sunbathing, but never once did I see such a thing. Now on the last day of the summer season they were soaking in the verdant beams that made their bodies like wax below a candle's flame. These two girls, beautiful in their own right, were in bikinis, lying atop beach blankets and lounging chairs with a bowl of ice holding Miller Lites and a small barbeque behind them sizzling away. Wordsworth, however moving and immortal, could not hold a teaspoon of my attention from that moment on. I just thought I could sit back down and read, but nothing was further from the truth. I paced around the apartment, I tried to form a desire to cleam my room, or do some dishes, anything, and what happens? They start screaming and running around, throwing ice cubes around and giving me another reason to see what's going on. I think had I described my situation to most men on earth, at least most in this country, many would have murdered me to take my place, and there I was fighting temptation like a kid with two hands in the cookie jar. Luckily Bob came home. But what does Bob do? He opens the windows and proceeds to complain about their beer-drinking sun-bathing combination. I was worried that they could hear him, but I think Bob figured that they had enough Miller Lite in them to ward off any bad memories of his denuciations. Bob looked, and he doesn't even care that these girls ( a blonde and brunette built and buzzed as though Dionysus and Venus were in singular form) are sun bathing, and he has a girlfriend, so don't think that I am on the perifery of male reaction. So this is what I fend off even in my own backyard. But to further elucidate my condition, I found myself at school today in the Univeristy Center, right outside the bookstore, where there was a table set up selling large wall-prints of various things, all quite generally asexual, when I paused to take in one picture. Mind you this was in the middle of a very public and frequented place on campus, and nobody seemed to give it a second glance except me, but here it was: Two very attractive women in bed-time attire passionately kissing. I looked around to see if anybody else was seeing this, or if it was just my imagination from my proceeding day's events. Nobody even flinched as they walked by. I quickly headed away from the place, getting it well out of sight before something worse was exposed behind it. Back to the scenery from my living room window. Kyle told me I was supposed to go down and hang out with the girls, but knowing not only my unattractive figure and stomach hair would scare them away for good, I knew of nothing to say that would come out right after knocking on their door. Try it yourself. "So I saw you were sunbath-" Nope. "So, anybody up for some sunbathin-" Nope. "I just ran out of Miller Lite. Do you have any I could borrow while sitting on your back porch?" It just doesn't work. So Kyle must be wrong, unless he or Adam can come up with some grand excuse to get them in that door. I guess that's all I have to tell you guys (and I do mean this in the strictly male sense of the word). Maybe I should write something for everybody just to make up for this otherwise singularly-gendered recounting of events totally beyond my control or even comprehension. Feel bad, feel jealous, just ignore this if you feel I'm on the dark side of off-colored this time.
***
And the moral of the story is never go hunting with somebody who wants to kill you. Oh, ladies, good to have you back in the story. I was just recounting a completely harmless... practical joke, antecdote, proverb that I came across that definately didn't happen to me. Sorry that you missed out, but in reality, you probably are the better for it. Hope all is well for you.
Gabe, you never know if anything's good until you try it. That's why I don't know of anything good. If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of life's great dissappointments. So true. I'm gone. Another day of grad school awaits... just grad school.... nothing else.

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