Drinking coffee elsewhere sparknotes8/13/2023 That, I suppose, was a joke." She squinted at me. "You were just kidding," the dean said, "about wiping out all of mankind. The black guy cocked his head and frowned, as if the beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks of his experiment had grown legs and scurried off. "A revolver," a counsellor said, stroking his chin, as if it had grown a rabbinical beard. Suddenly I was hard-bitten and recalcitrant, the kind of kid who took pleasure in sticking pins into cats the kind who chased down smart kids to spray them with mace. I was an honor-roll student-though I'd learned long ago not to mention it in the part of Baltimore where I lived. Until that moment I'd been good in all the ways that were meant to matter. Clouds passed rapidly overhead, presaging rain. When it was my turn I said, "My name is Dina, and if I had to be any object, I guess I'd be a revolver." The sunlight dulled as if on cue. "Oh, that was good," he said, as if the game were an experiment he'd set up and the results were turning out better than he'd expected. At the end of each person's turn, he smiled and bobbed his head with unfettered enthusiasm. He wore an Exeter T-shirt and his overly elastic expressions resembled a series of facial exercises. There was one other black person in the circle. The girl next to him was eating a rice cake. One guy said he'd like to be a gadfly, like Socrates. In the next game, all I had to do was wait in a circle until it was my turn to say what inanimate object I wanted to be. As a person of color, you shouldn't have to fit into any white, patriarchal system." "Sister," she said, in an I'm-down-with-the-struggle voice, "you don't have to play this game. Her hair was a shade of blond I'd seen only on Playboy covers, and she raised her hands as though backing away from a growling dog. ![]() "It's all cool, it's all cool," the counsellor said. The white boys were waiting for me to fall, holding their arms out for me, sincerely, gallantly. Russian roulette sounded like a better game. The idea was that if you had the faith to fall backward and wait for four scrawny former high-school geniuses to catch you, just before your head cracked on the slate sidewalk, then you might learn to trust your fellow-students. Then a freshman counsellor made everyone play Trust. ![]() ![]() One game appeared to be charades reinterpreted by existentialists another involved listening to rocks. In my group we played heady, frustrating games for smart people. Orientation games began the day I arrived at Yale from Baltimore.
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