Oh, the Life of the Mind

I am having dinner in Hutch (for those of you who don't know, it's a dining commons) behind a couple who presumably are on a first date. I can't help overhearing their conversation as the guy is practically screaming, and really, the world needs to know about this date because this is the date that many of us have here. Even if this is not a date, it's pretty emblematic of how social interactions are at UChicago.

Let me set the scene: imagine the dining hall at Hogwarts, only instead of floating candles, uncomfortably large oil paintings of past presidents ring the room. Light meanders from three giant chandeliers, and as they are probably almost a hundred years old, the lighting is pretty dim--or romantic.

When I first sat down, the couple was leaning towards each other from across the table. A few minutes after I started eating, the guy began postulating loudly about his theory on bar mitzvahs and functionalism (he is Jewish), and since then, the girl has been slowly leaning back and sinking further and further into her chair, legs crossed, as the guy advances closer and closer towards her.

To add to the excitement, the guy sounds an awful lot like a Chipmunk--only, a self-satisfied, intellectual snob of a Chipmunk. His sentences tend to stray upward in pitch, and he makes awkward hand gestures to emphasize "key points". These mannerisms got pretty out of control when he got to the part about his cousin getting a 57k bar mitzvah. Every once in a while, I could just barely hear an "oh, really?" or "huh, that's interesting" coming from the girl.

As the girl started collecting her trash, the guy made suggestions that they go back to his dorm room to watch a movie "or something." To this, the girl replied, "Oh no thanks, I just started my first class today and you know...I want to keep up with the work and get an early start." To which the guy replied, "Oh yeah, I completely understand. Are you still taking French?" "Yeah..." And then he proceeded to give her a lesson on interrogative sentences and "est-ce que".

Poor girl. Poor us.