WHITING: The town and the city

There’s a guy who rides his bike with a boombox fixed to the back of it, from which he blasts MC Hammer-like tunes as he makes his way along our campus. I don’t know who he is, but when I’m lucky enough to see him, he makes my morning.

I always want to break out and dance to his soundtrack, but usually repress that desire in favor of a more acceptable smile, which doesn’t really make sense considering how he is repressing absolutely nothing in his decision to play his music so loudly.

But I went through grammar school wearing uniforms that placed military-like restrictions on individualism. Skirt lengths were to be exact, hair length was to be moderate and jewelry was to be kept to a minimum. Loud music in the hallways was certainly prohibited. Mavericks like the biker aren’t exactly prevalent in the small towns of Minnesota.

Thus it’s because of individualists like him that I love the city. Encounters with eccentricities on the street are daily occurrences. There’s newness on every corner to be appreciated. There aren’t yokes of dress codes &- if a person is willing he can, for the most part, act however he wants and no one is going to say anything. Because at an urban university of 16,000 undergrads, there’s no mold anyone has to fill. You’ve got free license to just be you.

At home, however, I know everyone at the local market and thus, if I were to don the style of the girl I saw yesterday, who had cherry-red hair and bright green pants, I’d get questions.

In Wayzata there aren’t street performers willing to put themselves out there and subject their artistry to our sneer, our indifference or our awe. Granted, Boston is more straight-laced than New York’s East Village. But students here still have enough chutzpah to abandon wondering what others might think of them and dance, wildly, to the beat of their own iPod while walking down Bay State Road. Props to that girl &- it looked fun.

And there are lots of free spirits on campus. I run into uniqueness each and every day just while moseying through Marsh Plaza. The period between classes is my favorite time because it’s when the heterogenic nature of the city convenes a flock of individuals all en route to reaching an endless variety of destinations.

Yes, there are the well-known campus icons, the people we idolize, or at least notice, for their persistence in their doing their own thing. There’s the Comm. Ave. runner who keeps pumping iron up and down campus, audibly motivating himself the whole way. There’s the man who sports BU gear and who walks around with a Terrier.

But more importantly, there is the general student body, which as a collective whole seems to have embraced the nonconformist culture of the city. I just roam down our skinny campus to find people of all sorts: athletes in West, the bike drummers, hipsters in C.F.A., musicians crowded around a guitar in the grass, a boy with a long, red wool coat and the cheery weirdos who offer Free Hugs every Friday, even if they mostly just get rejected.

Being in Boston has made me more brazen. Because of its city dwellers, I am emboldened. I just have to think of the distinct individuals I observe on the street and decide if I want to channel their expressivity, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll put a bow on my head or walk to the beat of my iPod.

The city seems to say, “By all means, get dreadlocks. Pick the flower and put it in your hair. Do the European thing and play your music without headphones.” It gets the fact that spontaneous bouts of free and easy unorthodoxy are the stuff of life, perhaps even more so than discourses on Descartes. Do what you like, like what you do.

I imagine college without these eccentricities would be very boring indeed. I could be enjoying a green quad elsewhere, but I’d be missing out on the biker beats. It’s thanks to him that my morning, if not my day, isn’t typical. He gives me something to laugh about while I’m on my way to EN220: Literature and Human Freedom.

They say that life begins at the end of the comfort zone. I don’t want to get all philosophical &- there’s the School of Theology for that. But as for me, someday, maybe, I’ll have the guts to take Boston by cycle the way the boombox kid does, or at least the boldness to start jamming out to his beats as he rides by. Maybe when I return home I won’t feel obliged to turn down my Lil’ Wayne when driving down Lake Street.