Dinner in Cambridge.
August 18th, 2005[I wrote this Wednesday, August 17, but only just remembered to post it to the home page.]
Teymour and our summer friend Sarah finished the last of their finals today. To celebrate we went to — no, I did not suggest that we go to — Grendel’s for dinner and drinks. About an earlier, I ran into Sarah in the courtyard before heading to dinner myself. It was nice to run into her again, even if it was planned this time.
Before stepping into Bertucci’s for my first dinner, I overheard the following conversation on Brattle Street:
Boy 1: “Is water a polar molecule?”
Boy 2: “Yeah.”
Girl: [taunting] [Something repetitive although I don't remember what.]
It made me smile.
Even before our dinner encounters I ran into Sarah in the courtyard. She and I both stopped to double-take the boy playing what I think is a didgeridoo — one of those long, wooden tubes that makes a characteristically aboriginal droning. That made me smile, too.
Fast forward to Grendel’s. Teymour and Sarah had invited their summer school friend Ian who is not to be confused with our term-time friend, Teymour’s roommate, Ian. This one lives on Brattle Street. He told me that I smack of New England; he even called me “perfectly Cambridge,” but that I had justified myself — I was explaining that New York, Boston-Cambridge, and London were approximately the same; that Paris was distinctly different in its feel, that it was more relaxed; and that I preferred Boston-Cambridge to them all — in a way he hadn’t heard before and that I liked it. It was perfectly Cambridge. I told him that I had six years to practice.
He also made me feel better about applying to Duke. Ian is about to start his fourth year there and promises that it’s not Southern, but that I could find a BBQ place if I looked for it.
