JADED GLOBAL PERSPECTIVISTS

Sprinkled amid the droves of academically and socially obsessed NU students looking to make a mark and a friend, there exists a distinct brand of wildcat that unfortunately finds itself at odds with the “dry Midwestern cultural void.”

NU and Evanston perhaps taste bland to those reared in or around the very roots of western culture, eastern culture, Nordic culture, culture culture. And though these foreign matriculants (both humble and elitist) stand as fairly obvious members of NU’s discontent contingent, a more covert cat, equally dismayed, hides beneath a fabricated Euro-veneer: Mr./ Mrs. I’m Back from Being Abroad. The Jaded Global Perspectivist.

I remember an ol' Sig Ep fellow, proud, preppy and talented, who just really had something goin’ for him there, bein’ all active on campus and studious and, as I recall, quite the girl’s man. A really nice – you know, nice – young man. Well, anyway, this past fall he went off to, uh, Milano I believe it was. And he came back and was just, you know, condescendin’ college life and this school of ours like he was too cool for it and its American peoples. And man, you wouldn’t believe, the first time I saw him back, he started pullin’ some of that weird Euro affection crap. At the end of our class, close-talking, the fucker hugged me warmly, like hugging friends is ritualistic. Warmly, lovingly he hugged me! At the end of class, in front of others! Totally uncalled for. I was like, “Hey, man, that’s weird. Weird, man. Wanna stop? Now? No, you don’t want to stop? So, what, are you just not gonna stop huggin’?”

In our encounter, he freely renounced college life with notable traces of a faux-Italian accent, his words and actions suggesting the woes of an Italicized Floridian in a continental identity crisis. His thought process had devolved into elevated Eurospeak: “Once surrounded by smog-stained stone, I was, living neck and neck with Italians, I was, now what beauty canst one find in sprayed stucco walls and cookie-cutter strip malls?”

He thinks he looks cool in his new clothes.

He could no longer find the time for a petty trip to Nevin’s or a mid-day Norris smoke. His closest friends (now not so close) can’t reach him past midnight for a night cap because “all he fuckin’ does is sleep," they say. All he does is “work," they say, “no fun, no play.” “ 'I’ve had it with this college thing',” they say he says. Will he ever realize he’s not European, that he’s from Jacksonville?

Last year, on Sundays, at four, he used to swim with his cronies at SPAC. They'd jump recklessly off the diving boards and play makeshift dodgeball with kickboards. He once even pegged a little kid in the back with a wet tennis ball. By accident, of course. No, actually he did it on purpose and it was funny as shit.

Now, he just swims laps alone. I think he wishes he were in Europe, where volumes of culture and history stand in the shadows of this “fat cat country.”

With time and maturity, perhaps he'll think the better of his newfound distaste.

- David Bartholow

At 10/9/03 1:29 PM,

Virg for short (virginchano@hotmail.com) wrote:

pizza

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Redefining the NU Stereotypes
14 new categories of Wildcat
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