Summer, sometime, The Dirty South. A parked Taurus stationwagon. Blunt smoke, college students... struggles to complete sentences... "Dude, Q, we are gonna come visit you this semester." "Yeah, we'll come up during fall break--it'll be awesome, dude." "Yeah dudes, whatever."
Randy and Elizabeth drove from South Carolina to spend fall break with me and Philly. This would be their first northern cross of the Mason-Dixon line. Being the gracious yet egomaniacal host that I am, I had two major weekend objectives: 1) Keep them entertained and 2) Construct some kind of facade that will make a year's worth of "I get laid so much at school it's ridiculous" fables seem believable.
To achieve my goals, I had to keep us fucked up 24/3. I'm sure they felt right at home in that respect. Down at Clemson, Elizabeth has a concentration in "Sociology: Sleeping Your Way Through a Fraternity" and a minor in "Blacking Out." Her sorority likes to kick back on Saturdays and have a good old-fashioned Bud Light Case-Race. Winner drinks free. Winner also gets her pony-tail held while she blows chunks. But Elizabeth doesn't just party all the time. She marches to class a good two or three times a week--enough to get a 4.0 at Clemson. That's right. Think about that you fucking yuppie.
Randy, too, is focusing on his career objectives. He's a freshman at Winthrop, but as soon as he figures out how to read he's gonna hustle over to his advisor and pick out a major. He dreams of an anchoring position on SportsCenter. My money is on "twenty-something who sells weed out of his parents garage." But I gotta love the fat bastard; without him I would have had to actually pay for pot in high school.
We learned a lot from each other that weekend. I showed them real live Jews; Randy had never seen a yarmulke: "Dude, how come all those dudes have bald spot covers?" I then dispelled their preposterous notion that everyone at Penn is smart: "Elizabeth, Randy, meet my roommates."
Randy and Elizabeth reminded me that a vast majority of this country doesn't give a fuck about interest rates, net-present values or pretty much anything else with a number that's not a college football score. Kids like Randy and Elizabeth just want to know that there's more beer in the fridge and that nobody's pregnant. Does that make them worse people? No. Will they be worse off in life? Sure, 10 years from now, if they had to provide for themselves, you could probably give them crack to lick shit off your thigh. But that's why God invented marrying rich people.
