You know, it's strange how differentand how much better and how much worse and how much the same it is to come back here. I walked down into Clemons the other day (a very rare event, as Alderman is maybe the best place on earth and, as the omniscient facebook tells us, Clemons is a Brothel), and unthinkingly (as I was thirsty) turned around the corner by the stairs and drank from the water fountain hidden in a little alcove there. It occurred to me as I was drinking the water, though, that a) this was probably the filthiest water ever, considering that in all probability no one had consumed from it since meningitis ran around Grounds last spring, and b) because it had been almost eight months since the last time I had used this water fountain, wasn't it the oddest thing in the world that I so casually and so unthinkingly (since I was thirsty) turned around the corner to drink from it?
We're so used to the places we've come from that it's strange to remember how easy it is to renormalize. It's a little unsettling to realize that the basic threads on which we structure our lives only need a tiny bit of pressure before they snap into new and perhaps entirely different configurations. Now, I talk to my parents an awful lot, so I'm not a particularly good example of this, but I know very many people who talk to their parents rarely, if at all. This clearly could not have been the case only one year ago because we (most of us) lived with them. Yet we (most of us) treat it as simply natural that our interactions with our parents should abruptly transition from being a fundamental part of life to being a tedious but necessary adjunct to our conscience or our allowance.
But still too, if we approach the world of the University with an acceptance of its newest oddities, we soon fall into new and perhaps more awkward snares. For example: For some reason it has become fashionable among second years to forego introductions between two non-overlapping friends when one meets them both in public. It seems that we have all (myself included) decided that by this time everyone we know must know everyone else we know.
It's even odder when you meet a brand-new person and then your friend introduces himself to this stranger as your friend. As in, "I know McHooligan." That has a nice ring to it. Maybe that's what I'll go by from now on. After all, I'm Irish, I love McDonald's and I used to play soccer. All my friends will call me McHooligan in public, and then strangers will sidle off, terrified that, with a name like that, I'm a member of the band of "gypsies" that the The Cavalier Daily reported to us robbed the Student Bookstore a few weeks ago. Anyway, my friend did this the other day, offering his friendship with me as a sort of talisman to explain his presence at this party whereat I knew only maybe two people anyway, a set which did not include the individual to whom we were talking, who promptly developed a peculiar, alarmed expression and sidled off.
These are the problems of living and working in a social network as all-consuming as that which we develop so quickly here at the University, a network which still for each of us has so many gaps and so many irrational quirks. That's why the facebook is so much a part of our experience. It's not just a goofy toy; it lets us fill in the holes in our webwork of a life.
Of course, just because our renormalization is difficult to analyze and irrational and inadequate doesn't mean that it isn't perfectly real, or even more real than any similar thing that's come before it. I love the friends I've made here with a sort of cool affection that's much more absolute and much more reasonable than the sort of playground friendships that came before. The idea of a friend in need, once, was a sort of literary idea I'd use to define the strength of my friendships, as in: "If he ever needed me, I'd be there for him," or the reverse. Now, though, as no doubt we've all found, our friends really do need us, or have needed us, and we really do need them, and the truth of our mutual need and the nature of our new but powerful mutual affection has made friendship something much better and finer than I've known before.
In any case, my friends, it occurred to me as I sat on my balcony at six in the morning yesterday, that we're all pretty damn fortunate that our lives, as furiously dynamic and dramatic as they might seem from a perspective that's bound by the Grounds, turn out as well as they do as often as they do. And to my new friends who've repaired to us from New Orleans: welcome to Grounds. It's a fun place to visit, and thank God we get to live here. Enjoy the weather. Survivor: Guatemala and The Apprentice begin very, very soon. I can barely breathe.
Connor's column runs bi-weekly on Fridays. He can be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com.
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