2 June 07

Time:

?

Money:

$40(ish), mimosas, Colors.
$16, sushi ordered in, Kyoto.

More interesting things:

Went to Professor Number Five's retirement brunch. Anne, Annette, Rebecca, and I formed a herd (as Annette later described us) at the bank and made our way over to the restaurant together. Professor Alpha-and-a-Half invited us to stay with her in California (hell yes), we sat with two English Ed grads (one of whom I knew from the party, and who remembered me well enough to introduce me to the other!), we sucked down mimosas (okay, I sucked down mimosas; my colleagues may have restrained themselves to ladylike sipping), we toasted Number Five with one of her fifth-graders from 1961, whose remarks consisted of what Number Five had written to him on his 1962 report card, we chatted with all kinds of people, we enjoyed a great meal, and we listened to Miss J. sing "My Way" again (this time concluding it in her big voice all the way to the last two words, at which point she stopped belting and uttered "Number Five's way" in a normal tone of voice), causing me to buy it later in the afternoon (but that's another story to be recounted momentarily.) Professor Number Five herself stopped by our table and asked whether we'd ended up going to the beer bar after Otto the other night, which I answered with, "Well, the wine bar... we got tanked." Number Five seemed to approve, and, even better, so did the prof who'd remembered me: "Ah, yes, in the great graduate school tradition." The best part of all this, I think, was the constant sense of - wait for it! - community. Yes, community, ladies and gentlemen, that web between people that makes them feel like they're actually attached to the others, in this case even when you don't actually know them. Got that, administrators?

Bought my 1500th song. I had thought to myself - several days ago? a couple weeks ago? whenever I was last contemplating the next purchase - that no. 1500 needed to be something good. And then I thought to myself - this was just after the party, and I wasn't thinking about 1500 - after all this singing I really needed to buy "My Way." I discovered that iTunes has a million versions, but only one by Frank, which involves a bunch of other people, and I didn't want that. So for now, instead (I'll get Frank's one of these days), I got someone maybe equally appropriate, and probably more my speed in terms of just plain listening: Aretha, baby. How's that for a really good, genuinely special 1500?

Thought, since I had a fair amount of contemplating time trying to cool off once I'd gotten back to my apartment, that fraternities and sororities are supposed to provide their participants with feelings of brotherhood/sisterhood, but a lot of people find that that isn't really true, and anyway - just like no one would vote for "incompetent" teachers but didn't get enough information from the "competencies" - while it's hard to disagree with honor and scholarship and all that other stuff they talk about, I don't think all that's usually specific enough (at least not any more) to bring together otherwise unrelated people. (How does honor for one group - or scholarship, even better - look different than it does at the other end of Frat Row?) Sitting at that table, though, there were more substantive, "talk-able" things in common. One of the women suggested that of course we all love Professor Number Five, which is true, but as cute as it would have been, I might not have had quite as much to say to that grown-up fifth-grader. The commonalities in our educational background, however, meant a lot: we all know what it means to have Professors Number Four and Five teaching a course together, we all know that Professor Alpha cannot talk to someone without touching them (as evidenced by the story of the size-tag picking-off), and, in a meta-community move, we all know how connected we feel/felt, among plenty of others. So - and that Kappa stuff is lovely but does not count here - where's my secret handshake?