I just got back from a weekend at my five-year college reunion in Hanover, NH.
The air is so much cleaner up there, allowing me to expel from my lungs some of the diesel that has accumulated from two years in New York.
As always, I am uncomfortable in crowds of strangers; that's why I tend to find myself on stages, where I have a clearly defined Thing to Accomplish.
In our class tent, they handed out souvenir towels and water bottles. Carrying mine back to my old co-ed house, I looked like I was somehow on my way to the pool. We had dinner in the class tent -- lots of free beer, pizza, and lasagna.
I stopped off in the alumni welcome center (free Dartmouth lint brushes in the lobby!), where an attendant tipped me off that the class of '94 had a chocolate fountain in their tent, so I crashed their party a bit and dipped peanut butter balls and banana slices into the chocolate drizzle. If anyone gets married and invites me, get a chocolate fountain. That's all you need for a memorable wedding.
I was holding my umbrella while transferring chocolate-dipped morsels from the fountain to my plate, and I dripped chocolate on my umbrella, making it look like I had been through some Willy Wonka chocolate river fun ride of alumnitude.
On Saturday, I hiked with a friend and his dog around the periphery of the golf course, an hour and a half long journey that resulted in a bramble-burred dog and a deer sighting. When told this story, a classmate said that he had once seen a moose on the Green, a tale which others regarded as most probably apocryphal.
That night we had our big class dinner on the (iceless) ice skating rink, at the bottom of empty bleachers that might seat thousands. I met and re-encountered some lovely people, and had maybe eight or nine of them tell me they had seen my website, and a handful more suggest that I should let them know when I perform in Boston, a city in which I've never actually been for more than five hours.
Sunday morning, breakfast was served in the dining hall, which was packed, creating just the sort of socially awkward situation we hope will dissipate once we leave high school. In reality, though, we as adults are not necessarily better equipped to deal with cliques and bullying and such -- if a guy with whom you were standing on line at the bank suddenly grabbed your hat and refused to give it back, holding it above his head and out of your reach and taunting you, would you really have a better mechanism for dealing with it than when you were ten? You'd whine "Give it baa-acck," or you'd threaten to "tell," or you'd try to play it off and pretend you didn't care.
It's not that we're better equipped; it's merely that these things happen with less frequency (but more disquietude when they do occur).
On Sunday, I spent my last forty-five minutes at Dartmouth sitting on the Green on my '00 towel, stretching and reading the paper. It occurred to me that anyone watching might think I'm some kind of yoga-doing person, which I'm not; I'm just stretching because you're supposed to do that after you exercise. My reunion souvenir towel did prove immensely useful for this purpose, and the weather obediently turned to sunny and breezy for the afternoon. They always say to leave the party while you're having fun.
Incidentally, the New York Times costs $5.25 when purchased in Hanover.
As noted on the drive back, there is a store near Andover, VT, called:
Over Andover Used Books
The air is so much cleaner up there, allowing me to expel from my lungs some of the diesel that has accumulated from two years in New York.
As always, I am uncomfortable in crowds of strangers; that's why I tend to find myself on stages, where I have a clearly defined Thing to Accomplish.
In our class tent, they handed out souvenir towels and water bottles. Carrying mine back to my old co-ed house, I looked like I was somehow on my way to the pool. We had dinner in the class tent -- lots of free beer, pizza, and lasagna.
I stopped off in the alumni welcome center (free Dartmouth lint brushes in the lobby!), where an attendant tipped me off that the class of '94 had a chocolate fountain in their tent, so I crashed their party a bit and dipped peanut butter balls and banana slices into the chocolate drizzle. If anyone gets married and invites me, get a chocolate fountain. That's all you need for a memorable wedding.
I was holding my umbrella while transferring chocolate-dipped morsels from the fountain to my plate, and I dripped chocolate on my umbrella, making it look like I had been through some Willy Wonka chocolate river fun ride of alumnitude.
On Saturday, I hiked with a friend and his dog around the periphery of the golf course, an hour and a half long journey that resulted in a bramble-burred dog and a deer sighting. When told this story, a classmate said that he had once seen a moose on the Green, a tale which others regarded as most probably apocryphal.
That night we had our big class dinner on the (iceless) ice skating rink, at the bottom of empty bleachers that might seat thousands. I met and re-encountered some lovely people, and had maybe eight or nine of them tell me they had seen my website, and a handful more suggest that I should let them know when I perform in Boston, a city in which I've never actually been for more than five hours.
Sunday morning, breakfast was served in the dining hall, which was packed, creating just the sort of socially awkward situation we hope will dissipate once we leave high school. In reality, though, we as adults are not necessarily better equipped to deal with cliques and bullying and such -- if a guy with whom you were standing on line at the bank suddenly grabbed your hat and refused to give it back, holding it above his head and out of your reach and taunting you, would you really have a better mechanism for dealing with it than when you were ten? You'd whine "Give it baa-acck," or you'd threaten to "tell," or you'd try to play it off and pretend you didn't care.
It's not that we're better equipped; it's merely that these things happen with less frequency (but more disquietude when they do occur).
On Sunday, I spent my last forty-five minutes at Dartmouth sitting on the Green on my '00 towel, stretching and reading the paper. It occurred to me that anyone watching might think I'm some kind of yoga-doing person, which I'm not; I'm just stretching because you're supposed to do that after you exercise. My reunion souvenir towel did prove immensely useful for this purpose, and the weather obediently turned to sunny and breezy for the afternoon. They always say to leave the party while you're having fun.
Incidentally, the New York Times costs $5.25 when purchased in Hanover.
As noted on the drive back, there is a store near Andover, VT, called:
Over Andover Used Books
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Y~!