WHERE DID YOU STUDY? WHERE DO YOU WORK?
PHIL BLACKWOOD: I’m a writer.
NINA: Oh! What kind of books?
PHIL BLACKWOOD: Mystery, detective novels.
NINA: Ah!
PHIL BLACKWOOD: Don’t impress you?
NINA: No, I just read serious books.
—Her
alibi, 1989, Bruce Beresford.
LET ME TELL YA, there’s
an endemic pathology in categorizing humans.
This
matter came out over dinner with a friend of mine in a Vietnamese restaurant
several months ago. She works for a financial enterprise in Wall Street, and
she’s surrounded by the type of species whose education has been fostered by
Yvy schools, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and so forth. Over mojitos, which
by the way ran out of sugar, she told me that when she moved in to that elitist
environment, she got tired of hearing the same questions: Where did you study?
Where do you work?
It is quite telling that depending
on your answer, they stick you a quite dissimilar label: “Welcome-buddy-you-are-one-of-us”
or “Who-the-hell-are-you-and-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here?”
That
reminds me that something quite similar occurred to me in the past.
I
was at my office dealing with some capricious clients, a common species that
suck your time like vampires suck blood—no matter what, the nub of the issue is
to suck—when all of a sudden I received an e-mail from a dear friend of mine:
“Wanna
sail the British Virgin Islands ?”
H.O.L.Y C.O.W.!
I
flipped my chair and I dropped the receiver making a strenuous noise. As you may
imagine, I said yes. Actually, I said: Yes, yes, and yes. The sailing trip was
organized by the LBS’ Sailing Club, and I ended up boarding a ship with five
guys from all over the world. Dear Readers, needless to say, I was the Queen of
the boat. Ha!
It turned out that I was a mysterious woman for the rest of the sailors. So the second day we docked the vessel to an island, and I went to the
shore to refresh myself. Unexpectedly, a woman from another boat sat down next
to me and asked me The Questions: Where did you study? Where do you work?
Institute Le Rosey and I’m a Russian
Government Spy. Shhhh… Don’t tell anybody.
One
night I was dancing reggae with the doctor of the island, who by the way would
become my doctor—yet that’s another story, my Inquisitive Readers. I will tell
you some day—a guy came to me dancing and instead of the usual move “Wanna
drink something?,” he shot me The Questions in my ear: Where did you study?!
Where do you work?!
The
sixth day, I recall, I was waiting in line in order to pay for some batteries
at a shop when a guy from another boat started to chat with me. At the time of
walking out, he, wearing the Harvard class ring, stopped me to ask, doncha know?
First
off, keep your guns down gunslingers. I don’t have anything against those
elitist schools. In fact, I am aware that one of the privileges to study in
one of them is that you don’t have to suffer a bunch of mediocre
pseudo-professors who intoxicate you with the “memorize-and-vomit up” method.
Said
that, I wonder: Do we need to be classified as taxonomists do with species? Or
am I like the salamander, found in the Central Valley area of California
Copyright
© 2011 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER.
All rights reserved.
