Juggling Pianos

I play the piano. I've seen pianos open with their innards showing, their hammers exposed, their strings ready to be plucked by hand. I play a rather nice Steinway nearly every day. I've also played countless other baby grand pianos and - once - a big grand piano. I've seen piano keys taken out and put back in. I thought I had mastered the world of pianos.

But apparently the world of pianos is not the same as the world of keyboards.

In music today we were supposed to find a piano to share with someone else or a keyboard. Now, my school has six pianos in two rooms. We were in one room - the music room - so I thought I would have a better chance of getting a piano if I immediately went into the auditorium and claimed one of the two in there. However, a few other people had the same idea and I found myself mixed up in a crowd of four or five people, which is a lot of people when you only have two pianos. By the time I figured out what was going on both pianos were taken.

I bolted back to the music room and eyed the nearest (and worst) piano. There was only one person on the bench. But out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody else moving for it. Desperate, I launched myself at the piano bench, but, attempting to steer clear of people in the way, I missed. My competitor stared at me for a second with a somewhat worried look, then took a seat on the piano bench.

I quickly scanned the other three pianos, but they were all taken. Alas, I had no choice but to take a keyboard. There was no chance of me getting a spot on one of the pianos.

I waited in line for one of the nine or so keyboards that my school owns in addition to all the pianos. When it was my turn, only two remained: a broken one and one that was unusually large. Naturally, I was handed the unusually large one.

Handed is an understatement. In order to move that thing you needed to cradle it in your arms for extra support. Heaved would be a better word. At any rate, I was heaved the keyboard, and I grappled it, holding the large hunk of plastic with both hands and both arms.

It wasn't even that the keyboard was so heavy. On the contrary, it was rather light, and I had no trouble supporting its weight. But let me tell you, it was awkward. If I held it horizontally, it would crash into objects, people, and other keyboards as I walked, leaving a trail of ruin behind me. If I held it vertically, it would simply slide to the ground (that thing was slippery!). The only solution was an approximately forty-five degree angle. But what this lacked in inconvenience was made up for with awkwardness.

To carry a keyboard at a forty-five degree angle requires leaning slightly to the left while holding it more off to the right, taking the bottom with the right hand and supporting the top with the left. This causes a sort of limp-like walk, adorned by the occasional stumble. Even worse is what everybody knows will happen if you actually do stumble - and then fall. I don't want to be accused of manslaughter.

But I managed to carry - or lug - the keyboard to the nearest outlet, at which point I took an adapter, which had been balance precariously on the keyboard as I lugged it across the room. The teacher had put it there as I grappled the piano. I plugged the adapter into the outlet, unwinding the wire. I thought I had finally conquered the keyboard.

But when I looked for the familiar power plug on the keyboard, I found a smooth surface - they had put it somewhere strange. Back to the lifting of pianos, but this time I was on my back, holding it up with my legs while searching with my hands as well as eyes for the hole it plug the cord in.

I never did play that keyboard.

-Marianne

It must be the swine flu...

I've been hearing a lot about swine flu lately.  It's strange, since there really isn't much risk from it here, but people can't help but talk about it.  There were at least two instances today in which a student with a cold came into class saying, "I have swine flu," and then a teacher told the student to sit far away from everyone else, and then the student said that he/she didn't actually have swine flu, he/she was just saying that.  

The subject also popped up in some more unexpected places.  

My English class, for example.

My English teacher has a vicious sense of humor, to put it lightly.  So of course, she couldn't help but make comments about swine flu interspersed throughout class.  I have collected a few quotations from her: 

When someone mentioned being sweaty (for it was unseasonably hot) my teacher interjected, "Horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow."  

Talking about how (in her opinion, anyway, and she wrote the writing handbook, so it must be official) when writing a list you don't use a comma before the and unless there is an and within the last item in the list, she used the example of ham and eggs.  "Except it isn't Kosher and it suggests swine flu."  

Later, for whatever reason, there was another mention of swine flu.  "Swine flu," she said in a Russian accent, "eeit keels you."

She smirked dryly as she said it, amused with herself.  Yes, she has a strange sense of humor.    

-Philip 

You would like figs.

So it was another day at Newtonite, as I sat waiting for the clock to hit 6 so I could go home and study for the zillion tests I had the next day.
Our adviser broke the hush of typing keys with a groan.
"I brought these lemon bars at Shaw's," she started. "But when I got home, I realized they were fig bars!"
The room let out a collective retch of disgust.
"Hey, I love figs!" I said cheerfully.
"You DO??" she asked.
"Yea, I love them! My dad loves 'em even more, it's kind of a family thing I guess you could say.
"He DOES??"
"Yea!"
From across the desk Eli lets out his usual comment.
"You would. You would like figs."
"What does that even MEAN?" I asked him threateningly. "God, that's all you ever say. You would. What does that even mean??"
"We have an expression in the North End for people like you," our adviser said jokingly, and made a semi-vulgar gesture at him. "Tomorrow, I'll bring you those bars," she tells me.

The next day I walk into shop. She grunts at me, signaling me to stay put. She dashes into her office and comes out with three plastic containers of fig bars (which I had already forgotten about.) The rest of the day I walked around with them in my bag, and ate them as soon as I got home.
Yes, I would do that.
And damn, they were good.

Since when is going to the bathroom so complicated?

Although I'm nothing compared to some people on this blog, I'm pretty clumsy. No - not fall over your feet clumsy (Although I have occasionally been known to trip on nothing visible), but rather an incompitent sort of clumsy. And this gets me into some awkward situations - especially ones dealing with public bathrooms.

I was at a restaurant earlier this evening. It was a sort of small restaurant, and it had one of those single stall bathrooms that are really rather nice because they don't have doors that refuse to lock or stalls that make me feel kind of clostriphobic. However, being used to the other type, they confuse me and bring out my clumsy side.

I walked into the bathroom expecting it to have at least two stalls. I saw a sink on one side, so I instinctively turned the other direction to go into the stalls. But there were none, just a flat wall. I turned to the back wall, the only I had not examined, and found that there were no stalls, just a toilet.

I laughed at my foolishness and proceeded with the routine, until I came to washing my hands. I'm used to the cold water being on the right and the hot on the left, so I effortlessly turned the water to a nice, hottish warm temperature. But, to my surprise, it was cold, and didn't get warmer. I put in more and more hot water, but it just got colder and colder. I turned off the cold water, and it got almost unbearably cold, until I realized my mistake and reversed. They really should get the temperatures right.

Okay, problem done. I've washed my hands and the only step left is easy: drying them. What a relief.

Or not. This bathroom was equipped with an automatic towel dispenser. When I first used one I was quite good at it, but I've gone down hill since then. I waved my hand in front of the little glowing red dot, but nothing happened. I poked it a few times until, finally, the paper towel rolled out.

And it kept on going!

That's right. It didn't stop until it was at least twice the legnth it was supposed to be. I carefully picked out the line meant to rip on and cautiously tore the paper towel off. I did a messy job of it, though. It was a wavy rip that went above and below the line. I wonder what the next person to use the paper towels thought of it.

Finally, my trip was over! I quickly reached for the doorknob, eager to leave the confusing bathroom, but the door wouldn't open. I even manually locked it and unlocked it, even though the door automatically unlocks when the doorknob it turned. But it wouldn't open. IT WOULD NOT OPEN! Finally, exhasperated, I kicked the door, and it swung open so fast it was hard to believe it was ever stuck. I then realized I had been trying to open the door by pulling when I was really supposed to push.

- Marianne

P.S.: Yes, I did try to write this with a slightly Helenish tone, maybe because we haven't had much of it recently. I'm not sure if I succeeded

Fortunately I'm 5'2''

My English teacher was talking about a house in Salem called the House of Seven Gables that had a secret passageway behind a fireplace.

"The average height of a man in the 17th century was 5'6'', and a woman was about 5 feet. Now, I'm 4'11''--"

"You're a legal midget," someone in the class interupted.

"What?" said Ms. R.

"If you're under 5 feet and over 15 years old, you're legally a midget," said the student.

"What does that mean?" asked Ms. R. "Do I get money from the government or anything?"

"You can get handicapped parking," the kid said.

"Really? Where have you been all these years?!" said Ms. R, excited. After this revalation that she was a midget, Ms. R continued her story, about how the secret staircase was too small for normal sized adults to walk through, so there was a regular-sized staircase built for turists that led to the secret room.

"The only people who could walk in the secret staircase were the children, me, and my mother," Ms. R described. "When we got to the chamber at the top of the stairs, everyone had to bend over except the children, me, and Ma."

-Rebecca :)

Peer Pressure is When You're Pressured by Peers

Well, I am done with my first college overnight visit, to the University of Chicago. I have decided not to go there, for several reasons, not just because of the story that I am about to tell, although it is fun to pretend that.

I was assigned to a dormitory called Shoreland that was a mile away from the campus, near the lake, and we had to take a bus to get to it. The building apparently used to be a hotel in the 1920s, and now it was old and they were going to stop using it. My room was on the eleventh floor. When I got to the room that I was assigned to, I was slightly surprised that there didn't seem to be any space on the floor for me to sleep on. My roommate assured me that he would somehow manage to clean it up enough that I could lay out my sleeping bag, and then I went out to meet the other people to go to dinner.

It turned out that our dining hall was on campus, which seems a bit counter-intuitive to me since we were living a mile away from campus. We took the bus to campus and ate dinner at our House table (I heard someone comment that college was like Harry Potter--although I think Yale would be the real equivalent to Hogwarts). Then we went to an extra-curricular fair of some sort, in which there were tables and performances to see.  This included an improv show, one act of which involved a parody of an anti-peer pressure PSA.  

When this was over, we could not find our hosts, or as we preferred to call them, our people. We decided to take the bus back to campus, but we missed the first one. By the time the next bus arrived, there was quite a crowd of people who wanted to go back to Shoreland, and we all managed to fit--completely compacted in, like sardines, as they say.

Back at the dormitory, we decided to take the stairs up the eleven floors instead of the elevator just for fun. Not knowing quite what to do or where our "people" were, we sat in the common room for a while. Occasionally, some college students would walk by, we might say some things to them, and then they would disappear. At one point, however, a boy who realized that we had nothing to do offered to take us to his room, where we could have some "fun."

"What are we going to do here?" someone wondered.

"Probably just sit, like before, except now we'll be in a room."

We walked in, to see that there were several college students in there, some of them sitting around a table playing some kind of game with chips and drinking yellowish drinks out of small glasses.
 
"We have some orphaned prospies," our introducer said, explaining that our hosts had left us alone, so we were orphaned (and prospies meant prospective students).  

"We're just sheep," one of us commented, "and we just need a shepherd to tell us what to do."

It turned out that they wanted to take us to a fraternity party.  "Anyone who wants to go, write your name and your cell phone number on this blackboard."  A bunch of us proceeded to do so, one by one.  

One girl said, "I was thinking that I would stay here." 

But a college student girl, wearing a tight mini skirt, said, "Oh, but the frat party is part of the tour!  You should come."

"Oh, in that case, I'll come."  She then wrote her name on the board.  

Soon mini skirt girl offered us drinks.  "Does anyone want a drink?  I always like to have a drink before I go to the parties because there's no guarantee that at the party you will actually get one!"  She then added, "I'll make them especially weak for you."  

At this point, I decided to discreetly escape from the room, and I went to join my host, who was working on an essay and playing Guitar Hero. 

Strange, after seeing that improv show to then experience the kind of situation that always seems to be just a crazy made-up example.

-Philip 

Strange things happen after Gym tests

We seem to have a lack of blog entries this month, so...

A few days ago in Gym we had the infamous fitness test. For those who don't know, the fitness test is a written test at the conclusion of the fitness unit for which you have to know where all your major muscles are, how to calculate your target heart rate training zone, and other things that are useless in most areas of life.

Being in Mr. P's class, it actually wasn't so bad. On the contrary, it was very easy, as it was pretty much the same thing I had last year. I finished quickly, and so did most of the rest of the class. After turning in our tests, we really didn't have much to do. I considered reading, but instead occupied myself by attempting to communicate with sign language. The problem was, neither I nor Alpha (who I was trying to talk to) knew sign language.

This lulled to a stop after five or so minutes and I sat, doing nothing, until Alpha caught my attention and picked up a "ball" from the floor, throwing the imaginary object in my direction. I realized she was playing the imaginary balls game, a game in which you play catch with balls that don't exist.

I caught the ball and morphed it into a frisbee, throwing it back. Alpha morphed it into a football and threw it to me. I morphed it into a volleyball and threw it to her. We continued this for some time until Beta (who was sitting next to us) and soon Gamma (who was also sitting close by) began to play.

The ball, at the moment resembling one of those giant exercise balls that are really, really big and fun to bounce on, was in my possession when I realized half the class was watching us. I looked around awkwardly, smiled, and quickly tossed the ball to Gamma. She also seemed to notice around this time and made eye contact with one of the people watching, attempting to throw her the ball. She shook her head.

In about five more minutes we had approximately ten players: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, and me. Only the four of us (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and I) were really doing anything, but occasionally I would throw it to Epsilon, or Theta, or sometimes Iota. Zeta and Eta wouldn't take the ball from me, only from Epsilon, Iota, Delta, and each other, and Delta was out of my line of vision, blocked by a taller than normal boy.

At this time let me introduce three more characters: Kappa, Lambda, and Mu. Kappa is a friend of mine who was sitting at the other side of the room. She noticed that everyone else in the room was playing a game, and observed us for a while before picking up on the rules. She then threw an imaginary ball at Lambda, who happened not to be playing and found the entire thing stupid. Lambda gave Kappa a look as if to say "What the hell?" and continued to try to ignore us.

Soon after, I was bored with the ten players, some of whom didn't really play, and I threw the ball to someone new: Mu. Mu stared at me for a second, then processed that 

I had thrown a ball to him. He glanced at me, then the "ball," and then me again. I motioned for Mu to throw it, and he did, then began to ignore us in the same manner Kappa was doing.

~Marianne

What do you call those crescent-shaped fruits again?

I was eating at Cabot's yesterday, along with much of my extended family that was visiting for Easter. When we were ordering, the waitress asked me if I wanted French fries. I did not want them; I remembered that if you don't ask for them they give you a crescent-shaped piece of cantaloupe. Now, I don't really like cantaloupes, but for some reason at that moment I wanted one. So I started to say, "doesn't it come with one of those..." only to realize that I couldn't think of the word for cantaloupe. I swished my hand in a crescent shape several times, not thinking of what to call it. Eventually I gave in and just said, "one of those fruits."

The worrisome thing is that this kind of thing happens to me more than one would think.

-Philip

Political Drama in the SFA

I haven't had many funny or awkward stories to tell in the last few weeks, but many interesting things have been happening. I thought maybe I could write about interesting stories, even if they do not quite fit into the category of funny or awkward.

First of all, I am in the exciting period of my life in which I receive college acceptances and have them all trying to flatter me because they want me to choose them. I haven't yet decided where I will go, but fear not--I have good options, and I will be spending the April vacation visiting my top choices and spending the night (these may or may not be the subject of future blog stories; I have already attended something of a cocktail party for Boston-area students admitted to Yale, which was a little bit strange, I suppose).

My other interesting story is the big controversy over junior open campus restrictions in the SFA. As you might already know, a junior representative submitted a proposal on March 25 that would extend the current sophomore open campus rule to juniors (placing juniors with Ds, Fs, or Ns in study halls). I was opposed to this because it seemed unlikely to help the situation, as well as the fact that it does not recognize students' responsibility or the fact that different students are having trouble for different reasons. Anyway, it seemed as though the majority of the SFA supported the proposal, although a significant amount of people had qualms about it too.

During the next few days, the opposition movement began. I had been discussing the proposal with Sachi, and together we developed a stance on the issue. Sachi then wrote the Facebook note that you might have seen. Soon enough, a sophomore representative on the SFA created a Facebook group for people against the proposal, and soon a grand discussion and argument took place on the internet.

It soon became clear to me that if we wanted people to vote against the proposal, we would need our own alternative proposal. The reasoning for the proposal was to help students academically. I thought we needed some way to provide help for students without restricting open campus. That way, I hoped, people who would otherwise have voted for the restriction proposal would consider my alternative option, and maybe prefer it.

One night as I was pondering the problem, it came to me: students would meet individually with counselors to come up with plans and suggestions for receiving help on a case-by-case basis (case-by-case has since become one of my main phrases on this issue). That way the school could provide a way for students to receive help without infringing on their responsibility and (hopefully) providing a more effective way of achieving the same ends as the original proposal.

I talked to people, made agreements, convinced people of things, subtly sometimes. I almost scared myself about how much of a politician I was being. But never mind that. I wasn't too bad. Anyway, I wrote up a counter-proposal with help from Sachi and hoped to submit it at the next SFA meeting, April 8.

I showed up at the meeting, found that the library copier needed a password, so I quickly went downstairs to Graphic Arts to have thirty copies made. I rushed back up, just in time. As the discussion went on about the junior open campus restriction proposal, I found that some people seemed to want similar ideas to what was in my proposal. But unfortunately, the chair did not let me distribute my proposal. I made a few comments, but that was all. As it is, the majority of the SFA will probably vote for the restriction proposal, but if they see my paper, which is very relevant, I think I might be able to change just enough votes.

I hope.

I think I will be able to distribute my proposal at the next meeting before discussion resumes on the other proposal, because the student chair is going to be leading next week and I was talking to him. But it is not clear how this will turn out.

If you care, come to the next meeting, Wednesday April 15, at 7:00 AM in the library. If people see how much we care about this, maybe we can get their votes.

-Philip

False Memories

This isn't new, but the blog could use an update.

You may remember this quote from a while ago:

Me (paraphrased): I wish I liked hamburgers. It would be very useful to like them, because they're like sandwiches, but more filling, and they are served at almost every restaurant, and it would be very convenient if I liked them. But I don't.

Derek: That sounded like an audition monologue.

Some time after I had said this, I was talking to my mother about my dislike for hamburgers when she casually mentions, "You've never actually tried a hamburger because you never wanted them as a kid."

I stared at her. "Are you kidding me? I always thought I hated them because you would tell me I did and cook me other foods instead."

She denies that she ever gave me the impression I hated hamburgers, but I still think it was her fault. All those years I went around thinking I hated hamburgers...I do like hamburgers, and since this last conversation I have tried my first hamburger at the age of 15.

So, alright, I can forgive my mother for doing that once. But this was not an isolated incidence!

One of the things other people sometimes comment on is the fact that I never put my hair up. And the story I have always told them is that my mother always made me put my hair up in elementary school every single day and since then I don't wear it up. My mother overheard me telling this story and denied it was true, relentlessly arguing that she did no such thing.

I wonder what other lies I've been basing my life habits off of...


Sachi