Apologies

So, my roommate and I went to Panera after dinner, because I was in a bad mood and wanted nothing more than an asiago cheese bagel and a frozen mocha and a place to relax. We didn't get much work done, of course, but it was generally a fun time. While we were there, several things came up that we laughed uproariously about, while the dads and their kids looked on in frightened curiosity. So, because I'm lazy, here are the things we laughed about at Panera:

1) James Joyce

Last semester, my roommate, who shall henceforth be known as A because I'm too lazy to type roommate over and over, took a class on Ulysses. A year or so ago, I found this Kate Beaton comic about Joyce's letters to his wife, Nora. Don't look them up. Please don't do it. There's a reason Kate Beaton's dreams are haunted by a spectral James Joyce threatening to send her correspondence. Sophomore year, both A and I took a course on the Canterbury Tales. All of this leads up to the fact that we decided that the most hilarious/dirty literary penpals ever would be Chaucer and James Joyce. Think about it. It's funny.

2) Canadians, eh?

Another Kate Beaton comic that I really love is this one. Because it's true, of me at least. I can be so enraged that I'm about to beat my head against the wall, but if someone is suddenly polite to me I am completely unable not to respond in kind. Also, I have to have the last apology. I really have to. No really. I'm so sorry. Sorrier than you can ever be! Ha. I apologize for friends' bad days, for bumping into people, for people who step on my feet, for forgetting anything, for doing better than someone. You name it, I'm sorry for it.

3) Walt Whitman

...love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching;
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice...

Need I say more?

4) Professors

We're both English majors. We both basically live in this English department. We talk about professors. all. the. time. It's an inescapable topic. In addition, we Gertrude Stein them - I've never met a Bryn Mawr student who doesn't say professors' names as Firstname Lastname, each and every time they mention them. It's bizarre, and we frequently wonder if BMC is the only place that this happens, or if it's more widespread.

5) Starbucks/Panera

I seem to have some sort of mental block. I can know that I'm in Panera, but I seem completely incapable of calling it anything by Starbucks. This is possibly because I am in Starbucks all the frickin time, but it's starting to border on the ridiculous.

6) Literary Movements

In talking about Joyce, we inevitably started talking about literary movements, and how much we love Modernists and their kooky relationships with one another. I also looked up Mary McCarthy and read about her infamous feud with Lillian Hellman, about whom she said on the Dick Cavett Show, "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." HILARIOUS. This ended in A and I deciding that we want to be in a literary movement full of crazy smart people who all hate or love one another and create lots of literary intrigue.