It's Tuesday.I wake up and smile as I realize hat this is the first time in my esteemed Dartmouth career that I don't have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now I can get drunk like the rest of the cool people on Wednesday nights.
I put on some clothes and go to Collis for breakfast and spend about six minutes trying to get the perfect combination of cranberry and apple juice for my personalized cran-apple juice. I consider eating a plain bagel, but I decide smoking a cigarette will provide the same nutritional value. And since Collis now has those oh-so-comfortable metal chairson the patio, I figure I'll look cool or something.
I sit down and light up, but I'm still a little groggy because I stayed up the night before watching the Oscars and had nightmares about Dianne Wiest exploding out of her dress and killing me. I'm still a little upset that Jodie Foster lost, because I've been trying to gain fluency in Nellspeak. I figured the Oscar would convince the Rassias Foundation to institute it as a language here and let me be a drill instructor. "Tay tay, Nell wan pahcaurr," I say to myself, which effectively translates to, "I'm scared, Nell wants popcorn."
But the Oscars were good and worth staying up for I decide, because I really love to see celebrities drunk -- like when Jack Nicholson presented the Oscar to Michaelangelo Antonioni, who I bet will die within the next six months now that he has been handed the honorary death certificate Oscar.
Dartmouth is a weird place, I think to myself. Everyone here is so attractive that anyone could probably pass for a Hollywood star at the Oscars. That reminds me: Yesterday I thought I saw Paul Scofield walking out of the Hop, which could very well be possible because he didn't show up for the Oscars. No big deal, of course, because he lost.
But that's sort of what is neat about the Oscars -- everybody shows up looking really good even though most of them know that they are going to lose. I realize that is sort of what Dartmouth is like, but I'm too tired to work the metaphor out completely, so I begin looking at all the people walking across the Green, noticing how some people look a bit like Tom Hanks or Hugh Grant or Andie MacDowell or Uma Thurman. I'm a little perplexed, though, because I can't find anyone here who looks like Dianne Wiest.
Then I think, Dartmouth should have its own version of the Oscars, but I realize that would be a miserable failure because most of the people here are like smart versions of Forrest Gump. That makes them a lot less likable than Forrest Gump, and you certainly wouldn't want to give them any awards.
But I'm tired of thinking about the Oscars, particularly because I lost the illegal Oscar pool that I helped to organize in Mass Row. I picked "Circle Of Life" to win Best Song since it was the only song from "The Lion King" that I had ever heard, even though I went to see the movie last summer. So I get up, extinguish the cigarette and head to the bookstore, to pick out my classes.
This is generally my favorite part of the term, because I get to spend exorbitant amounts of money for books I never read and bookstore bucks that I wouldn't even bother using even if I knew how. But I'm in a better mood than usual picking out my books because three of the four classes I'm taking have only one book a piece.
Then I get to the English section, and realize with a certain amount of terror that the English class I'm signed up for has nine books. I'm terrified because even though I'm an English major, I don't think I've read nine books in my entire college career. So I wander the aisles and try to find an English class that is more to my speed.
I pass by a class that has about forty books and nearly go into convulsions. But then I realize that they're not novels but plays. I can't imagine why anyone would take a class where the books cost more than a term's tuition -- unless they're racking up those bookstore bucks for their childrens' education -- so I quickly move on.
But nothing at all here is to my liking (Homer, Joyce and Kelly were just not meant to be combined), so I just stick with my nine book English class and pray that it will be all lecture and that there's no final exam.
I'm getting restless, so I pay for the books quickly, briefly wonder why everyone who works at the bookstore is so snotty and then determine that it's probably training ground for working in the Registrar's office. Then I leave, and now I'm writing this and realizing that my love-hate relationship with Dartmouth is just like my relationship with the bookstore, the Oscars and Dianne Wiest. I think I need another cigarette and some more cran-apple juice.
