The odds of success when reintroducing a species to the wild are slim?statistically speaking, these odds are about five percent better than really really crummy, plus or minus five percent. These precise statistics don't only apply to box turtles and the elusive blue manatee; they apply to the reintroduction of lethargic college students as well. With less than a year before my own reintroduction to the "jungle out there," I am beginning to fear for my life?well okay, my life of luxury.
I will never be on The Bachelor or be featured in Cosmo; I am not admirable enough to be an admiral, I am not a poet and I know it; I will not be a president that no one cares about or wins a civil war. In short, I will never follow in the footsteps of our more successful Bowdoin alums unless, of course, to find one of them in order to beg for money. No no, at t-minus seven months, my goal is survival, not success.
With this one goal in mind?survival in the real world?I have turned a blind eye to the advice of my advisors, deans, parole officers, and astrologers. All these adults want me to do is think, but it is not thinking that keeps the squirrel warm in winter: it is his nuts. What is more, how did he acquire his nuts? Did he philosophize his nuts into his nook or den or whatever it is that squirrels survive the unforgiving winter? No! Did he use electron spectroscopy, cryptography, or anthropology? No! Thus, I forever turn my head from the academic world and look towards my mammal brethren for the key to survival. To succeed in the jungle, one must learn from its inhabitants; as my friend Squirrel makes clear, it is not thinking that allows for survival, but rather it is what Squirrel does best: be sly.
Even when faced with a challenge?like, say, a chameleon on a color wheel?one must blend into one's surroundings. Although Bowdoin offers no formal courses on such an important survival tool, there is a resource on campus that is extremely useful towards this end: the senior etiquette dinner. The evening's sole purpose is to instruct seniors on how to avoid making a social "faux pas" that could draw attention to one's self and thus lead to immediate jungle death. So, along with my imaginary friend Squirrel, I threw on a tie and wandered into the etiquette dinner?tardy?ready to be educated.
I readily admit that I am a little uncomfortable whenever I sit down to a place setting that does not involve a tray. Without a tray I just don't know where to put those little green clover marshmallows that I pick out of my Lucky Charms with my pinky and thumb. After the meal is over, what am I to use as a snow sled? Perhaps this explains some of the difficulty I had at the etiquette dinner?'cause let me tell you, it was quite a jungle experience.
Here's the gist of the etiquette dinner: 1. Everything is hard to eat. Every vegetable had been trimmed, molded, and molested into the shape of perfect spheres. It was fun poking them with my fork and then apologizing to the woman on the other side of the table when she received radishes, rutabagas and cherry tomatoes in her eye.
2. What looks tasty tastes foul. What looks foul, tastes foul, but you have to put it in your mouth anyway. Then you practice slyly spitting it into your napkin.
3. Between courses you can earn extra points for your table during "bonus rounds."
For example, after the salad they rolled cherry tomatoes across a pre-lubricated tablecloth; points were awarded per tomato captured, baited, or chased by dogs onto bread plates, which is apparently where you put tomatoes that have overstepped their roles as things that go from your plate to your mouth (as an aside, I should mention that this part of the program is in danger of ceasing to exist should trapping, baiting, and dog-hunting of tomatoes be made illegal by Question 2).
The main course was by far the most challenging: everything was either on a bone, tasted like bone, or was a bone. The centerpiece of the course was a carcass?some sort of previously untasted mammal hailing from a grassy part of Neverland. The carcass? much too heavy to have been moved?had ended its life upon a bed of extra long spaghetti which we were not allowed cut up. It was miserable; I went hungry; even Squirrel had to break into his stash of nuts in order to survive.
I still have much to learn before I will feel comfortable joining the wilds that lie just beyond Brunswick. The etiquette dinner was a bust. Squirrel's heart rate is slowing as he enters hibernation, and it is unlikely that he will be able to speak for most of the next four months. Worst of all, I have a nut allergy, so, logistics aside, I still couldn't move in with Squirrel post-graduation. Alas, jungle death is forthcoming; fare thee well.