Monday, January 19, 2004
A Man Has To Have Direction in His Life
In all fairness, I cultivated the persona. I wore outrageous tie dies and mardi gras beads, tattered shoes and a felix the cat hat on backwards and I tied a mysterious pouch to my beltloop… so I can understand his skepticism on first encountering me.
Also, it was a rather austere, unfriendly part of Walnut Street where we met. One block north lay wide lawns, treelined brick walks, a sculpture garden and many really fine buildings that somehow blended welcome with gravitas. You couldn’t see that from this part of Walnut Street. All you saw was the quad to the south and, to the north, the streetside blankness of a series of dull academic edifices. The quad, though an indisputable masterpiece of neogothic masonry, was clearly off limits to visitors - the tall wrought-iron javelins that fenced it and the security guards at the gates made that clear. So they were stuck on a rather unfriendly street and had probably been so for longer than they should have been.
And there he was, with wife and two sons, the eldest clearly a high school senior considering going to the school I was attending. The whole family was visiting to check it out; I could read them all at a glance: his eldest, trying hard to look intelligent and openminded; his younger brother, bored stiff and whiny, ready to start being disrespectful any second now; and mom, who put a brave face on her numerous apprehensions. Dad was in a regulation preppy uniform - I don’t recall what it was but he looked studiously casual and completely uptight. His chiseled jaw was clenched and his patrician neck strained mightily to look relaxed as he hailed me - obviously a reprobate, outlandish and likely incapable of coherent thought - but by the same token, equally obviously a student of this dingy, inhospitable, and now questionable institution. He’d had enough of this nonsense, wandering about looking like a fool in front of his children. So he stopped the biggest fool he could find - me - and asked with a verbal sneer: “Does this school have some sort of central campus area?”
I swung on him with a tractor beam of concentration and transfixed him for a moment as his face began to flush with anxiety. And then: “Yes,” I replied, “there are many ways to reach it from here but I would recommend that you take this road east (pointing) until you see an iron gate surmounted with a latin inscription to your left. It’s about one block down and the gate is unbarred. Pass through it and up a series of broad shallow steps. You’ll find yourself on a slate and brick path, which will lead you north to Levy Park and the heart of the University.”
He stood stock still; his eyes focused on mine. I could see him processing inconsistent data: a motley fool at an unsavory intersection had given him utterly precise and courteous assistance, speaking in complete sentences which were, moreover, grammatically correct. He seemed incredulous. He looked to his eldest, who shrugged. Returning his eyes to me, his face was a bit less florid but his brow had furrowed slightly. “You’re welcome,” I anticipated, and proceeded along my giddy way. I felt sure that he’d been testing me, to establish for himself and his son whether students at this purported institution of higher education were up to the challenge of dealing with real people. Once I’d met that challenge, thrown it back in his face, he really didn’t seem to know how to handle it.
