Rockin' Robin-Style, and more

Last semester was so chock-full of adventures that I felt sure Brown couldn't compare--just kidding! This week has been full of fun and ridiculous things. And frigid temperatures, but that's beside the point.

1) Fun and ridiculous things... like tap dancing. You know you're addicted when you're playing pool on Saturday night, dressed cute in a fuzzy scarf and oh-so-tappable high heels, and you start getting weird looks because--you're tap dancing. Unconsciously. Given that I was at a bar, maybe I should've tried dancing on the pool table rather than next to it. Oops!

The cause of my addiction is What's on Tap performing at Brown's annual Fall Dance Concert. We had 2 auditions, 3 tech rehearsals, 1 dress rehearsal, and 4 shows, so no wonder my feet wouldn't stop moving! (I tried to post the video. Didn't work. Will try again later.)

2) Haircutting. It's a fascinating idea, and ever since I was a little kid wielding a mighty pair of scissors near Barbie's head, I've wondered what it would be like to cut someone's hair. Like, snip, there it goes! This week, I had a willing victim. Of course, the satisfaction of cutting hair is somewhat mitigated when you're only snipping off an eighth of an inch, but it was a powerful feeling nonetheless. Unfortunately, I'm not cut out to be a barber. I didn't royally screw up, but I mostly just had fun chopping off random sections to make it shorter. (That's the point, right? Jon only said he wanted it shorter.)(He later cut it himself.)

3) Ivy League Co-Champions!!! Go Bruno! The last time (and only time) Brown won the exclusive title of Ivy League Football Champion was my freshmen year in 2005. I went to about an hour of one football game then because it was so frigidly cold, I couldn't sit on the metal bleachers for any longer than that. This year, Brown had a chance at the title again. So, again, for the second time in my life, I sat through an hour of a football game in sub-freezing temperatures. Yay for us, Brown won. Too bad that Harvard won, too, so we have to share the title.

The game was so cold, though, that I wore:

• a tank top under a t-shirt under a long sleeve shirt under a track jacket under a sweatshirt under a winter coat;


• three pairs of socks;


• leggings under jeans;


• a scarf;


• a hat under a sweatshirt hood under a winter coat hood; and


• gloves under mittens

I was still freezing! I came home, turned the heat on full-blast and curled up in bed under the covers for half an hour. I bet the football team would get a lot more fans if it didn't take such superhuman body heat to stay warm at the games.

4) WWE World Wrestling Entertainment. Uhhhh. What?! It was a fairly dull Monday night with nothing to do, so I had a decision to make. I had free movie tickets but the only movie playing looked terrible. Jon had free WWE tickets, which of course sounded terrible. Yet at the same time, I've seen plenty of bad movies in my lifetime. When would I ever get the chance to take in a wresting match? I certainly wouldn't pay for it.

We went. The Providence Dunkin' Donuts Center was filled with spectators. Thousands of spectators. Little kids not more than three years old. Wheelchair-ridden old men. College-age kids who looked like they might be Brown students. And they were all waving posters and signs proclaiming their undying love for that big, bulky hulk wearing a speedo and throwing a table on top of his opponent. The event was broadcast live, and of course, Jon's free tickets were about as close to front and center as you can get without being part of the match. We hid behind our neighbors so that lest anyone we know be watching WWE on television, they wouldn't see us there.

Actually, though, it turned out to be fun. In a ridiculous way, of course. The wrestling was a highly choreographed half-magic show, half-dance of sorts. Run, 2-3-4, jump, 2-3-4, lift chair on 5, swing on 6, and flip backwards as opponent lands beautiful high kick to your gut on 7-8. Then lie on ground for 2 measures while he pulls your leg into an almost-graceful swan position. How did they do that?? How did he crush the trash can over that other guy's head and both of them are barely breaking an unchoreographed sweat? If you recognize that the whole thing is a performance, it's pretty fun to admire the sheer hulky-manly-steroid-assisted talent.

Hope that makes up for months of no adventure!

History

I don't care what your political leanings are, right now we can all be proud to be American. In fact, I've never been prouder.

Sometimes I worry about the fate of the country and of the world. There are so many doomsday predictions of overpopulation, climate change, cancer, genetically-modified organisms, unemployment, poverty, genocide, materialism, achievement gaps, failing school districts, discrimination, corruption, pork-barrel spending, uninsured children, war, terrorism, energy crises and--the list goes on. I can't list all the potential threats to the survival of the human species. Sometimes it's hard to imagine that we're really at the top of the evolutionary food chain when we've gotten ourselves into a bigger mess than any other species on Earth.

And yet--look at what we can accomplish when we try. One hundred and fifty years ago, white men still held blacks as slaves. Less than a century ago, this country practiced legal segregation. White children and black children weren't worried about health insurance coverage; they were worried about equal schooling. Jim Crow laws ravaged our America the Beautiful and divided the nation into a white-versus-black civil war of sorts. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stepped forward to inspire change, his dream was a world away. He only wanted his children to play in the streets with white children: he never said a word about his children having sleepovers in the White House with white children.

That is how far we have come. On Tuesday, we proved to everyone who thought it wasn't possible that, yes, any child in America can grow up to be whatever they want. Once again, America is a global leader. How many countries have elected a minority leader? How many countries can say that a biracial man born to a foreign father has held the reins of national leadership? Today I am proud to be an American. I am proud of my country; I am proud of the progress we have made, and I am proud to see what happens next.

I am thankful that I'm young enough not to know a different world.

The challenges are still there, of course. Discrimination and poverty and achievement gaps and climate change and all that stuff still exists. But if America can recognize its wrongs and move beyond slavery and segregation to proudly set an African-American in the White House within the course of 150 years, think what we can accomplish in the next century. When my kids are old and wrinkled with the years of a life well-lived, what kind of world will they be part of?