Special Cousin and Special Auntie dote on the lil’ peanut, while the lil’ monkey takes flight.
You just never know, is the thing.
Ever so many years ago I was a college freshman, worried on the one hand about living away from home in a big smelly student co-op, yet thrilled on the other by the sensation that I was at the center of my very own intellectual and social super-nova. Non-conformity, I found to my delight, was not only not something to be ashamed of, it was actually worth cultivating.
Lunchtimes at my high school, by contrast, I’d often eat alone. I would pick my way carefully to an out-of-the way spot I’d located between two buildings, behind the cover of some ferns, down against the building and beneath a window where I could read and eat my turkey sandwich and drink from my small milk carton in peace. I’m not sure which I sought out more earnestly: the quiet, or the concealment of my solitude.
But when I came to college, not only was I a fish finally in water, but the water was an ocean, not a pond, and there were species of fish I had only read about in books, and there they were, wriggling right past me, dazzling me with the sunlight bouncing off their scales!
Continue Reading →
