BY ADAM DALVA

In print | November 8, 2007

Scenes from the college experience: The Roots, funkier than Grandma’s month – old mayonnaise, takes the stage and moves the wrist-banded, yet unfettered crowd towards some kind of higher plane of being. President Al “Green” Bloom explains to a pizza-numbed ensemble that their money has not just been used to make buildings that won’t apply to us, and people leave wiser and greasier. A Nobel Prize laureate tells various Left Brain (pah!) listeners how the universe works and then is nice enough to take questions from non-exploded minds afterward, provoking giddiness that is usually found only in this day and age among filthy New England sports fans.

Swat is full of transcendent instances, but after events such as these, the one question more pressing than “How do you get wireless in the library?” more troubling than “Why would dirty toenails appease Derrida’s ghost?” is “Dude, where the hell were you last night?”

Why is it that our fleeting time here is defined more by events that we have missed than things that we have actually done? For example, no matter how great my wistful charm while sadly dancing to Don McLean, I don’t feel that anyone has a more negative pub-nite experience when I’m not there. Nevertheless, when my all-star pass goes unused, the next day is full of shocked accusations of Tim Allen level lameness (“Jungle 2 Jungle” excepted, of course. NEVER insult “Jungle 2 Jungle”) from people who otherwise wouldn’t care. Similarly, although ?uestlove is probably not crying into his money-stuffed pillow that there was not another Jew-fro in attendance at the LSE, my absence struck certain acquaintances as more tragic than choosing Ben Folds above Wilco or the demise of “Stylus.”

In the j’accuse filled world of missed correspondences and misery straight flushes that we inhabit, we often find ourselves apologizing so often for missing something that no one cares about our successes. I wonder if on occasion we end up worrying so much about these dropped opportunities that we form alternative Sméagol realities that conform with what we should have done, other selves that, glimmering with the auspice of the right decision, taunt us like our friends do when we leave Paces ten minutes before “Soulja Boy” hit and everyone decided to start having sex. (Long tangent time: What the hell is it with that song? Is a 17 year old atonally bragging about “supermanning hoes,” an act that the Marquise de Sade would consider abhorrent, really the heir apparent to the great lineage of giddily filthy fuck now songs that has moved from the “Ignition” to “Get Low” to “The Whisper Song” over the last decade and is probably going to be responsible for most of the students in middle school classrooms in 12 years? It’s almost as confusing as wondering how Sean Kingston could be in jail in 1999 considering he was like eight. I really hate being old).

This hypothetical alternative presents us with a timeline filled with possibilities and questions. I wonder how our time here would have been different if anyone had made themselves responsible for insuring that there would be no more construction on campus after New Dorm 1 was finished, or if we actually had managed to name it after Dukakis or Kalafus? (It is fun to pretend though, just like I often think of Shawn Kemp dormitory posterizing fools and fathering children.) What if we had all moved to Wisconsin with some Diebold machine in Fall 2004 and done some good old fashioned Kennedy style voter fraud? Couldn’t we have managed to watch “Arrested Development” on Nielson enabled televisions? Why didn’t we realize the pass/fail semester was the golden ticket to happiness instead of an invitation to turn in every problem set on time?

There is always the thought that, instead of sitting in our rooms, we should have attended that one event, pre-registered for that amazing class, remembered our gym credits, not written a Phoenix column about Bryn Mawr or made a “Rudy”-like run to prominence as a walk-on sensation for the Lacrosse team. Just as it probably would be a good idea to write a movie, move to Hollywood, cross some token – celebrity – filled picket lines and become a rich and successful scab, so too are our lives heavy with the burden of the alternative possibility. While it would be all too easy to buckle to these what-ifs and lie curled in a fetal position with pita chips, our much mocked non-presences are somehow excused by the balancing that can only take place when you show up to Sharples and realize your tormentor has forgotten it was Jerk Chicken night and is going to Tarble. After all, as good as Sméagol may seem, it’s always more fun to be Gollum.

Adam is a senior. You can reach him at adalva1@swarthmore.edu.

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