It's 4:20 and I have 40 minutes to write a 1000 word opinionated column for The Dartmouth, the nation's oldest (and most respected) college newspaper (I think) -- that's twenty five words per minute for the next forty minutes. (I don't think I can even type that fast.) I could force my dedicated readers to listen to me babble or I could produce something original, brilliant, and insightful that would intrigue the Dartmouth community. I'll opt for the former
I suppose I have some interesting activities to add to my resume since last I was on this beer-stained and hallowed ground. I built houses in Nicaragua; was sustained by gallo pinto (red beans and rice) three meals daily for two and a half months; fought a flash flood with brooms and dead chickens; lived in a windowless, white-washed, cubicle with bedbugs; saw a three-day-old dead dude hanging out the front windshield of his truck on the side of a Managuan (the capital city of Nicaragua) highway; learned the CIA is a major drug running organization between Latin America and the United States; became an expert in laying brick, block, pipe, bending rebar, throwing cement on walls and rocks at kids, in buckets, and kids in buckets; mixed cement in el jefe (Spanish for "oh-cement-mixer-which-makes-mixing-cement-so-much-easier-than-trying-to-mix-the-stuff-by-hand); smelled a freshly gutted cow and dumped Bessy outta the wheelbarrow and onto the grill; ate chicken cooked on the face of a lead-painted fan; fired an AK-47; inspired a transportista (public transportation operative) riot; drank entirely too much of the world's best rum -- Flor de Caa (El rrrron de Nicaragua); was told I didn't exist by my host father, Nacho, for not having a strict religious belief system (he got really pissed when I told him to throw some cheese and salsa on those chips); popped an enormous cyst-thing on a little girl's head and squeezed out all kinds of junk, while translating in a medical clinic (I forget the word for enormous-cyst-thing in Spanish, but no me gusta, nonetheless); picked coconuts on deserted Caribbean beaches with natives in wienie bikinis (thongs for the uninitiated) while little boys rode horses bareback to school; was molested by the head of a state (I need to be careful here, I don't want to force more political instability upon a country run by businessmen in Miami); was awoken at the rising of the sun by cows, goats, roosters, pigs, and children who thought they were ingenious alarms, which poked and repeated "oye" until I dragged my tired feet out of bed and stuck them in scorpion-infested boots (I almost packed one home, but damn, they just don't have a snooze button); worked for a man (a nice man) who graduated from Harvard with a degree in human relations and ironically (moronically??) hasn't bothered to learn Spanish after six years in a Spanish speaking, third world country (I think his whole problem stemmed from the Harvard thing -- hint, hint, trustees); eventually left "Nica" and returned to the first world, only to be shocked by culture and fired from my summer job by a pedophilic, burn-out for not doing anything wrong (I would go more in depth, but I don't want to bore anyone with my personal life).
So now I'm readjusting to this scene and feel only a little less lost and scared in the woods of Hanover than I did after watching Blair Witch this summer. I'm a senior, ex-athlete, who snuggles between kicked kegs and drunk dogs at night, writes pseudo-columns for The D by day, and has a father who must explain to his peers that his son goes to an Ivy League institution and will soon graduate with a degree in writing creative half-lines of subjectivity. Where will I go from here? Up.
