Opinion

Shipping up to Bah-ston

The Hyatt’s lights are a sort of aquamarine color tonight, the sort of aquamarine that makes a man question why he’d use the word aquamarine instead of just saying green. Maybe it’s because I’m in college now: I’m an intellectual now.

But enough about me. I was born in New York-not the city that never sleeps, but the suburbs outside of it that’s always asleep with the television on. It’s nice to look at the Charles River instead of the Hudson; people are rowing boats instead of throwing roach clips. And when I open up my window it’s nice to hear the occasional, ‘Move yah cah!’ as opposed to a bunch of New Yorkian expletives my mommy always told me not to use unless I’m in an emergency-like when someone won’t move his car.

My hometown of Westchester County, the hometown of many Terriers, is a lot like the Navigator premium multipurpose printer paper sitting right here in my room. Because it’s white. It’s as white as my printer paper. The only difference is my printer paper doesn’t gossip about which wealthy couple down the street is getting a divorce. At least not to me he doesn’t . . . I don’t know what he’s saying to my printer.

It’s wild to be in the city, even one as peaceful and as beautiful as Beantown (by the by, been here for days, haven’t seen a single bean . . .’ what’s with that?) And I’m digging the diversity. The last time I saw a black person back home was when my mom took me to a Fairway in the Bronx after I complained about the lack of cheese in the house. There was also the summer that my dad asked Vernon Jordan for directions in Martha’s Vineyard.

But it’s a big change, no doubt. For instance, a little while ago on my way to class I ran into two groups on each side of the T tracks who were trying their best to explain to me how president Barack Obama is the 21st century version of Hitler, specifically by PhotoShopping pictures of the two of them palling around together and drawing cute little mustaches under Barack’s nose. They made a convincing-and by convincing I mean rambling-argument about how our generation was going to reap the consequences of a fascist dictator like our current Nazi president. But the comparison, as loudly as they may have made it to my Jewish face, still feels weak. It’s sort of hard to picture ol’ Adolph appointing guys like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod to be his tightest bros in the cabinet.

But that’s the kind of diversity you get in a big city like Boston, right? For another instance, I have this beautifully exotic geology professor too, and the best part is, I think she’s totally into me. Could I end up like one of those kids on the cable news/18+ websites who gets with their super-hot teachers? That would be a certain-type-of-dream come true. The reason I suspect I have a shot is because of the way she looks at me when I answer a question in class. She gives me these puppy dog eyes each time she tells me I’m wrong. It’s so cute. Those puppy dog eyes kill me, man . . . who ever thought pretending to be a domestic animal would make a guy do just about anything? Also, recently she wrote on a test that she would like to ‘see me’ after class! Ah, the college life . . , it’s just like Asher Roth sang it would be. (Side note: how on earth did Asher Roth get into college?)

And is there anywhere good to get a haircut in Boston? I don’t care how my hair looks, I just care about how others care how my hair looks. Nothing pisses me off more, besides the show ‘Yo Momma’ than hearing a female hairdresser ask me how I want my hair to be cut. How about you stop cutting when you’re mildly attracted to me? If you have any desire to even kiss my cheek, just put the scissors down. And come to my single room in Warren Towers.

Don’t get me wrong; sometimes I get homesick. And by homesick I mean I miss being physically intimate with my girlfriend. Last night I made her read her assigned reading to me via video chat until I fell asleep. Because I hate learning, it worked real well. I woke up to a frozen frame of her smiling at her stupid sleeping boyfriend on the other side of the country with ‘imcheatingonyou91 has left the video chat’ on top of the screen. I heard the sweet sounds of the city and my fellow freshmen getting ready for class. And I thought, both privately in my head and publicly in a college newspaper perspective piece: ‘Hey, this university thing ain’t so scary after all.’

Then I had to cross the street.

Website | More Articles

This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

Comments are closed.