Medium Sized Man On Campus, pt.1

There's a time, I guess, when everyone realizes that there's more to life than just sitting around watching I Love Lucy and hoping that there's a nip slip that hasn't been caught yet. The need to better oneself becomes almost crushingly strong; you gotta do something, man. This is around the time that people go to college, or slowly replace their body parts with bionic components. For me, it's the former.

In my case, I've decided to settle on a nice little school that caters somewhat to my intended major. Now, the only appropriate thing to do when you've settled on a college is to visit the place, just to make sure you haven't accidentally signed up for a Japanese school with the same name where there are thousands of nubile young women in school girl outfits starved for male attention and who are, as Sartre once said, "Cock hungry."

That would be terrible.

So for those of you unfamiliar with the time honored tradition of college tours, there's apparently some jism stained piece of binder paper lying under Plexiglass somewhere that details the etiquette for the tour guides. It goes something like this:

1. Don't speak loudly. Despite our protestations to the contrary we, like all American colleges, hate the hearing impaired, deaf, and the even more ghastly "those who are not within two feet of the tour guide."

2. Diversity should be important to us. Therefore, there must be no native English speakers within our selection pool for guides. Rather, someone who is ambitious, foreign, and preferably has the speech habits of a racial caricature from an early Disney cartoon is the preferred guide. If you do speak unaccented, fairly normal English, stuff your mouth with the smallest member of the tour. This will both assert your dominance over the herd and render you "ethnic" enough to lead people around.

3. Reading is a sign of weakness. Do not read about what you're guiding people through, they'll only sense fear. Stare blankly ahead if asked a question you don't know the answer to and, if possible, drool.

Similarly, there's a guide for the those being toured. Different, yes, but nonetheless important. I guess I was left off the mailing list, but all the other people present met the criteria perfectly:

1. If you're the parent of a prospective student, make some jokes about drugs to lighten up the tour. Also, chortle loudly whenever an enrolled student passes by you, remarking loudly, "Oh, he's stoned," preferably to your wife or children.

2. If you're the actual kid, make sure to top off your angst before you come. Remember, this tour is bo-ring, and you don't want a stupid education anyway. Look at your feet, practice mumbling, and glare at everyone around you until someone looks back. Then, blush and look at your feet again.

Terrible, the way society is going down hill these days. On the other hand, I left the tour group after about fifteen minutes, and liked the campus just fine. Plus, there was a guy that passed me who was wearing a hammer and sickle emblazoned shirt, and if there's two things I like, it's carpentry and harvesting wheat.