I Go To Bowdoin
I've been stuck in Chicago since Sunday. My final destination is Portland, Maine, and the massive snowstorm yesterday resulted in my flight being cancelled. Being in Chicago is usually not a bad prospect, but O'Hare Airport is not Chicago and I have to hover around each boarding gate in the off chance that I make the standby lists.
Last night a young biracial guy was trying to find a seat near the crowded gate. In a massive clash of cultures he wore sagging pants with gangster reeboks, but his shirt was collared, of the Banana Republic emblem variety. It was clear that he was unhappy about his airport delay and because everyone occupies two seats (one for themselves, one for baggage) he wasn't having any success. I took the bags from my second seat and offered him a place. I asked where he'd come from and when he said that he'd flew in from Seattle, I couldn't help but chuckle. You can't get much farther from Seattle, I said.
I go to Bowdoin, he hissed.
He said with all the entitlement of a kid that's been having his way since infancy. I'm in the establishment, I go to Bowdoin, and I'm finished explaining myself. Rather than wait through delays with the rest of us, he stormed to customer service and flew back to Seattle.
I've seen the Bowdoin kids now - it's not hard to spot them now that I've been waiting as a standby on the last three flights to Portland. There's the Asian kid with an embroidered college sweatshirt, black with the bright yellow BOWDOIN lettering sewn on front. Another girl has a baby blue fleece matching her baby blue iPod. In her arm she cradles a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran. There's another overweight blonde who laughs at everyone's jokes, a girl, it seems, who's finally found a place where one is not only recognized for their smarts, one is cool.
To occupy themselves they pass around a crossword puzzle from Sunday's newspaper. The Asian guy and the plump blonde are left handed. As exclusive as their school may be, they articulate like MTV kids with an overabundance of the word "like." They do not eat McDonalds.
I'd forgotten about east coast schools and establishment since I'd been in South Dakota. Even at places like Stanford, UCLA or Cal Berkeley, one does not feel the aura of hierarchy like they do in the east - a few weeks before I left I saw a David Foster Wallace1 reading in Westwood without feeling conspicuous. Seeing these kids reminded me of a time I worked in New Haven, Connecticut, and learned that the community referred to Yale students as "Yalees;" us here, them there.
I started up a conversation with one of them - a little bit forced to begin with but as time passed she relaxed and started telling me about her experience. She was a private school kid from Hawaii, apparently falling in love with Bowdoin on an "east coast university" tour she did in high school. She was studying political science with a minor in psychology; later in our conversation she pulled out notes for a Japanese government class she took the previous semester. She explained later that her major is in comparative government which means that she learns political systems from around the world to compare to America.
I asked her if she liked school explaining that I knew a lot of people who didn't particularly enjoy it. She had a shocked look on her face; of course she loved it and was daunted by the prospect of finding work and being outside of the cushion of school. She didn't say so but I'm sure she was a good student. Her handwriting said as much: fierce, consistent, close knit letters, printed neatly throughout her notebook.
Despite myself and what I would probably categorize as jealousy, I liked my new friend N. We talked about politics for a while and she conceded that she'd cried the day that the US had invaded Iraq. She'd taken a few semesters of Italian. She asked questions about life in the Dakotas. Although most of what I told her surprised her, she commented that she wanted to see the Midwest and experience something different. She spoke in earnest, never condescending. I'm always happy when I meet passionate people. I'm usually depressed when I meet people who seem to happily waft through life.
I remember visiting a friend once at the very established University of Chicago. She was finishing up law school and allowed me to tag along with her on a brief tour. It was a Friday afternoon during which students and professors gathered for a cocktail hour. It was then that I had an epiphany: this was not only a school, it was a club. These afternoons, I realized, were for solidifying the circle. Elite schools were as much about solidifying the circle as they were about learning postmodern critical theory.
Bowdoin has something which seems similar called Common Hour. The next scheduled Common Hour features feminist writer Jennifer Scanlon discussing the "commoditization of patriotism." It seems to be a teaser for her forthcoming book entitled The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy Became a Commodity. She's also written books with titles like Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture. I'd be curious to go but it's only for Bowdoin faculty, staff, and students.
1Wallace wore yellow construction boots, jeans, and a t-shirt. Before the event he walked, unrecognized, through the crowd of people lining up to hear him read.
9:08:18 PM 
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