A Dillar a Dollar, a Ten O'clock Scholar

 

Today is the annual scholarship luncheon. Jerry and I eat with our scholarship recipients and are reminded just how irrelevant senior citizens are to college seniors.

Like most social interactions, this one serves a lot of purposes. Like thanking donors, encouraging scholars to help the next generation coming down the pike, and celebrating scholars hard work.

I think the most useful thing accomplished is teaching twenty years olds how to eat at the grown up table.

In spite of the free food, students often need to be pressured into talking to the old folks. I don't know what is said to them, but I know they are prepped, which most successful people are, by the way. They come to tell us how they will cure cancer and build perpetual motion machines. They walk away knowing how to eat with a fork.

The luncheons are extremely formal even though Bellingham has designated itself “the city of subdued excitement.” This means that I (aside from the service staff) am the only one who knows what all that hardware in the place setting is for. One year we were seated with the University president, who really ought to know where the desert spoon is, and I found myself ad hoc hostess by leading the whole table past an awkward coffee moment. She was so out of touch with real life that she barely understood my Martha Steward reference. Talk about Ivory Tower!

These are not things you need to know in real life. These are things you need to show other people you know.

Nancy Sherer

 

 


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