This past weekend I had my 5 year college reunion up at Vassar in scenic and dilapidated Poughkeepsie. Most of my friends still live in New York so I see pretty much everyone I’d like to with a few exceptions. I took a train up North with Zane and Josi, two of my closest friends who decided to move south of the Equator (an extreme exaggeration), so we had some catching up to do. After a few 16oz tall boys (that’s right drinking is allowed on the Metro-North) we fell into typical Vassar grad discussions: the New Yorker, our over burdening parents, and general mean spiritedness directed at:
1.) bosses
2.) how stupid other people are
3.) grad school peers we hate (for me group 2 and 3 often overlap.)
On a brief tangent, Josi goes to school with a girl who has a genetic disorder with the following symptoms:
1.) She doesn’t have her adult teeth. As a result she still has her baby teeth and since baby teeth aren’t meant for long term use her’s are worn down to nubs so she slurps her food.
2.) She doesn’t have sweat glands so she is easily overheated and often removes her shoes to cool off.
3.) Her feet smell terrible
4.) She is incredibly rude and frankly kind of a bitch. She once brought a milk jug filled with wine to a dinner party. Not a box of wine mind you but a jug which had previously been filled with milk. Why would one transfer the wine, I’m assuming from a bottle or maybe a box, to a secondary container which is totally inappropriate? I mean milk is pretty gross as it is, do I really want to drink wine from a milk jug? As my friend Olga would say: “Seriously??? NO SERIOUSLY!?!?!?!”
5.) She is what Josi describes as “aggressively unattractive.”
***I am unsure whether #’s 3, 4, or 5 result from her disorder. I find this person fascinating I hope you all do too…***
Sorry I digress, so reunion was a total blast but there were a few disappointments. First of all nobody had gotten really fat and nobody’s life had turned into a complete disaster. My friend from high school had his reunion last week and asked one of the more popular kids from college what he was up to. His response? “I have a job… I have an apartment.” After 5 years of adulthood the meridian of this guy’s success was the fact that he had a place to live. I mean even that primitive tribe in Brazil who shoot arrows at airplanes can build a hut. Three cheers for liberal art educations!
After that story I was excited to gloat over the misfortunes of Vassarites who had fallen by the wayside, but to my utter disappointment everyone seemed pretty much the same. I mean nobody was even balding… what a letdown. There’s a chance that everyone who has gained significant weight or whose lives had totally imploded stayed home during reunion weekend. Those people are selfish.
Aside from sleeping walking and waking up in a dusty crawl space in the attic of the dorm I was staying (sans footwear) things were fairly uneventful… up until Sunday brunch. There we were; hung over and forcing down eggs and coffee when this woman handed me a a document.
The woman was in her 60s, it was her 40th reunion. Anyways the document she was handing out was titled “Psychic Experiences Related to Vassar.” She then goes on to describe the various incidents during her time at school and after when her supernatural abilities were able to predict the death of relatives and to forsee automotive trouble. After correctly predicting her Mercedes would break down in 1966 she admitted- “Most of mine [psychic abilities] are of events known to other people, but not yet to me.” She then detailed every random run in with fellow Brewers, in the park, at the hardware store etc.
***Another gem- “My psychology professor and advisor and I were lovers from 1972 to the mid-1990s when my caring for Mom prevented further travel to Connecticut to see him.” I’m not sure how that last story is relevant to psychic powers but I enjoyed it none the less***
Here I was thinking that we Vassarites were bound by neurosis, white man’s burden, and the need to use the prefixes “meta” and “indie,” boy was I wrong. I guess whenever I run into some jerk off in a Vassar sweat shirt it has to do with our psychic bond and nothing to do with the fact that Vassar graduates 600 people a year some of whom made the risky and difficult decision to move 40 miles south to New York City, the cultural and financial center of the Western World and happen to bump into each other.
There I am skimming her recollections and premonitions when I see, SHE’S A LAWYER! At that moment my mean spirited mockery turned into something else… opportunism. This woman is totally batshitcrazy enough to hire me! I mean if its one thing that can supersede mediocre grades and a crappy work ethic its unexplainable psychic phenomenon.
Olga was apprehensive about my desire to work for a crazy person. In fact she said it was a “terrible idea.” I’m not so sure… I’ve worked for both men and women with Napoleon complexes, swollen assholes, megalomaniacs, even a lawyer who was so weird he refuses to refer to his infant son by a gendered pronoun. Instead he called his son “it.” Are any of those people less crazy? I think not. Furthermore think of the pros for a minute. I could excuse my poor professionalism on “psychic static” and assure my new boss that it was fate that brought us together and not just the fact that we went to the same pretentious liberal arts college. Come to think of it I’d rather work for a crazy person than an asshole.
I am now opening up my psychic channels prepare to receive my messages Vassar attorneys in the greater New York area…
