Once upon a time

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm were born one year, one month, and twenty days apart.

Their home was Hanau, Germany. Two years before Jacob’s birth, an older son, Friedrich, was born but died in infancy.

Compared to modern standards, infant mortality rates in Europe at this time were relatively high.

I am certain knowing this would not have qualmed the pain of Dorothea and Philipp, the Grimm parents.

I assume, though am not certain, it also did not allow Jacob and Wilhelm any comfort, knowing a ghost child lived among them.

By 1796, three more members of the Grimm family had died: two more sons, both in infancy, and Philipp Grimm, the children’s father and Dorothea’s husband, plunging the once prosperous family into poverty.

Many children are fatherless in the Grimm Brother’s tales.

Cinderella

Snow White

Or experience horrible (grim) circumstances:

The Handless Maiden

Hansel and Gretel

With the support of family members, Jacob and Wilhelm acquired excellent educations.

At an expense: the family often lived in miserable conditions and ate very poorly.

Resilience. A near fairytale-like quality.

Middle

At the University of Marburg, Jacob and Wilhelm began to collect and transcribe old tales.

A vanishing culture, German peasantry, could thus be preserved allowing for the first edition of Kinder und Hausmärchen to be published in 1812.

Several problems arose:

Both Jacob and Wilhelm used the introduction to their first collection as a platform for German nationalism: “Everything that has been collected here from oral traditions is (with the exception of ‘Puss in Boots’) purely German in its origins.”

Unfortunately many of the stories have counterparts in French and Italian culture: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Many Furs.

Social critics also had problems with the stories’ treatment of sex, violence and incest.

In the original Rapunzel, the princess’ clothes get progressively tighter after the prince has visited several times in the night.

At the end of Cinderella, the evil stepsisters get their eyes pecked out by birds.

One cuts off her toes, the other her heels in an ill-fated attempt to fit into Cinderella’s slipper.

The witch in Snow White dances to her death in white hot shoes.

In Allerleirauh, a lesser known tale, a widowed King attempts to force his daughter to marry him. She runs away disguised as a kitchen maid.

Many children are also abused in the stories.

In The Poor Boy in the Grave, a starving orphan boy is abused and betrayed by his master. In a final effort to live, he steals honey and wine to eat, before dying, alone.

Hansel and Gretel lose their loving mother and are tricked into visiting an evil witch by their father’s new wife.

Two tales are openly Anti-Semitic: The Jew Among Thorns and The Good Bargain.

This encouraged Adolf Hitler in his campaign for German nationalism in the mid 20th century, an outcome one hopes neither of the Grimm’s desired.

Both during the Grimm’s lifetime and after their deaths, many of these unpleasant themes were phased out.

A project meant to restore national identity to Germany transformed to entertainment for children.

End

After several subsequent publications of their story collections, the brothers focused their efforts on linguistic scholarship.

Jacob published the first volume of German Grammar in 1819.

By 1840, both are awarded professorship at the prestigious University of Berlin and began working on a comprehensive dictionary of the German language.

At this point, their new editions of old tales had been modified to “eliminate every phrase not appropriate for children.”

Modern thinkers have interpreted the original tales in a variety of ways.

Many feminists argue against the passive, weak role of female characters.

Princesses are saved by their Princes, kings are tyrannical, powerful, patriarchal, and women are self-sacrificing, obedient and patient.

Others celebrate the ingenuity of women who escaped their circumstances: Hildebrand, Rapunzel.

Psychoanalysts believe the stories reveal unconscious fantasies, like those in dreams.

One scholar even suggests that Sleeping Beauty’s prick on a spinning wheel is symbolic of a young woman beginning her menstruation cycle.

She only awakes once a mature sexual love, the Prince, finds her.

Wilhelm Grimm married Henriette Wilde in 1825 and had four children.

Jacob remained a bachelor until his death.

The two brothers appeared inseparable as they lived together even after Wilhelm’s marriage.

Wilhelm died on December 16, 1859.

Three years, nine months and four days later, Jacob joined his brother in the grave.

Various movies, books and biopics have been made about the Grimms and the tales they collected.

Even in death, some shred of their lives continue, ghosts of their stories live, happily ever after or not.

Photo by Emily Chow / North by Northwestern.

It’s pretty safe to say baseball is my favorite sport. Nothing brings up better memories. For seventeen years I’ve been watching the Phillies get so close and choke at the very end. It was heartbreaking, but unifying at the same time. I’m from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, prime Phils real estate, and when they lost and let us down at least we could turn to each other. I could look to my best buddy and know we were both feeling exactly the same thing. Disappointment. Heartache. Depression. But a depression that united us all. We were Phillies fans in Pennsylvania. We were part of a community. I was part of a family.

This went on for 17 years. In the autumn of my 18th year I moved to Chicago. I tried to keep up with the Phils, but it was tough. I remember being pissed off and hating the Midwest when the local cable providers would play something like the Cubs and the Pirates, a game that never matters, over the Phillies and Mets, a bitter rivalry and a game the entire Eastern Seaboard was watching that could decide the NL East.

I just wasn’t used to being the only Phillies fan in a land of apathetic, displaced baseball fans, or worse, Cubs fans. Back home, everyone loved the Phils and you could make a new friend by talking about Chase Utley’s homer last night. Out here, you have a grand mix of students from all over the country and world who like different teams and feel no unity toward one another. Northwestern students tend to take to the Cubs as a second team, a home away from home, but it’s not the same – it’s almost out of obligation, out of pity, living so close to North Chicago. Might as well root for the Northsiders, they’re not actually going anywhere, so it’s not really blasphemy against my true team.

I remember October 29, 2008 was at once the happiest and saddest day of my life. The Phillies finally won the World Series again, their first in 28 years, only their second in history. The entire city of Philadelphia had gone without a championship for 25 years since the Sixers won the NBA championship in ’83 – there’s a long urban legend about the curse of Billy Penn I’ve tried to explain to friends out here, just another in a long list of Philadelphia idiosyncrasies that fall on deaf ears so far from home.

A good friend of mine and one of the truest Philly fans I’ve ever met, Jon Gonzales, shot me an email when I told him about this story idea. About last year’s win, he wrote, “Beating the Dodgers, a team who almost everyone picked to beat us, and making it to the World Series seemed to wake the city from it’s dormant sleep it had held for almost 30 years. People really began to believe in the team and there was a sense of camaraderie among everyone living in Philadelphia. It was like the underdog had finally overcome every possible obstacle and this underdog was a team that had an entire city pushing it across the finish line.”

I remember watching game five (like all of the games before it) in the basement in the dark, alone. And I remember when Brad Lidge threw that last signature slider to cap the perfect season, my emotions got the better of me and I cried. A lot. The day I’d been waiting for for 18 years was finally here. It was about damn time.

Was I embarrassed? I would have been, if anybody had seen me. Instead, the dorm was quiet, the school was dead and Evanston was abandoned. The day I had been waiting for for 18 years was finally here, but it came just two months after I left home. I was an emotional wreck that night in the basement, at once the happiest and most alone I’d ever been. I called everyone I knew that night – friends of mine still in the city, parading down Broad Street, like I should have been doing. I called one of my best friends who didn’t answer so I left a rambling, six-minute long stream-of-consciousness voicemail about how much I missed her and the Phillies and Philadelphia and everything and how I made the worst decision of my life coming all the way out here for school in a land where nobody cares about anything and how everyone’s a robot who likes shitty Chicago baseball teams and how I felt so utterly and hopelessly alone, a voicemail she apparently saved and still listens to when she’s feeling down.

It was the most alone I’d ever felt. In Philadelphia one and a half million people were dancing; in Chicago I was alone. Going into the playoffs this year and facing the insurmountable task of beating the Yankees, I thought I had finally gotten a leg-up on my friends back home – I’d be able to suffer the eventual heartbreak by myself, away from the epicenter of the pain. I thought it would somehow deaden the effect, make it easier to bear.

I should have known it was going to be just as bad as last year. The Phillies lost the World Series, and I felt like crawling into bed for the next month, but the world kept turning out here. Students kept doing their work and I was expected to keep up with mine. What made it worse, though, was knowing that in my depression and apathy I was, once again, alone.

I thought it would be easier to take the pain of the loss away from Philadelphia, but the camaraderie and general sentiments in the city, any city, are what unite people and make it so special in the first place. Last year I missed celebrating with 2 million people on Broad Street; this year I missed the pervading disappointment and sorrow that lingers in the air in center city. This pervading, unifying sorrow, though, is what makes it easier to bear –- not being away from it all, like I previously thought – being right in the middle of it, bumping up against one another, reaching down to your fellow fallen man and helping him regain his footing. I was once again away from it all. Never mind what “it” is exactly or how to best classify “it.” I was just away from it: the general “it” of Philadelphia.

I think Jon hit the nail on the head. Chicago just doesn’t have this “it.” They have a different “it,” a distinct Chicago “it” I’m sure I would miss if I were a displaced Chicagoan, but I’m not. I’m a Philadelphian 700 miles from home, and I’m all alone out here. Jon concluded, “Overall I think Phillies fans may have gotten a little too high on the team, expected a little too much…. But unlike a lot of fans, this city never gave up on this team. Even down 3-1 there was the belief it wasn’t over; even when we were behind by four, down to two outs with Victorino two strikes in the hole against the best closer in the game. That’s what’s great about this city to me. We never give up on our team.”

The cliché, yet usually true, answer to “what matters most to you a friend” is “a sense of humor.” So naturally, I exploited this fact to its bitter end. As a middle schooler, I practiced quick thinking around my classmates, and found that being funny was an easy way to make friends. As I grew older, I used my wit to distract boys from my pimples and somewhat jelly-belly shaped midsection. Maybe, just maybe, I could be clever enough to make them see past the Butterfinger stuck in my braces. My wit became my armor against petty adolescent insecurities, and it became my primary currency for friendship. Just like those twisted characters of Seinfeld.

But when I came to college, I noticed something was awry with my formula. Without the assurance of bumping into the same people every day, I never got past the acquaintance stage with most, and as a result, became merely a clever afterthought. When I did happen to enter the realm of serious conversations with someone, I choked. I had nothing substantive, deep or even mildly informative to say. Everyone else appeared to be treading along a rather steadfast path—engineer, lawyer, journalist—and underneath my Spinal Tap references, I had no idea what I really wanted out of my life. So, whenever someone attempted to discover the facts and figures of Hayley Altabef, I simply deflected all serious queries with another self-deprecating line, entirely unsure what those answers would actually be. And because of my total lack of self-awareness, I found that most of my friendships stagnated on a surface of superficial inside jokes, sharing nothing on which to base a true bond.

I had totally missed the mark. Instead of leaning about people, their interests, and their quirks, I had settled for a series of incongruous stop and chats, in which personalities were exchanged merely on the side of quips. My only way to relate to people caused them to see me as little more than an encyclopedia of sexual innuendo and Superbad references. While I had always conceived of wit as an indication of intelligence and depth, I quickly discovered that, in excess, it placed me on the shallow, one-dimensional side of life. Wit certainly displayed my mental muscles and bluntly presented what I was thinking, but it continually failed to explain why. This fickle “why” bit plagued me throughout freshman year, and dug friendships built upon fact, not philosophy. I had no idea how my mind really worked, and beyond dissecting others’ humor, was oblivious as to their thought processes as well.

Now, as a sophomore, I’ve made a conscious decision to leave behind most of the acquaintances that once filled my walks to and from Tech. This year, I’ve decided to embody the cliché college experience and find myself alongside others who are trying to do the same. I’ve laid most of my witticisms to rest, and have replaced them with authentic conversations that steer clear of a mutual distain for middle parts or whole-wheat pasta.

Without the gloss of rehearsed comebacks and standby routines, I’ve found my friendships at Northwestern have grown into something much bigger than a handful of wry observations. They push me to find something beyond the everyday Seinfeld banter that so often veils intimacy. It’s a whole new kind of anticipation, walking the tightrope of true friendship instead of lobbing tired lines back and forth. My old pretense of humor was exhausting for all the wrong reasons; while sharing myself with others is perhaps equally taxing, at least I come away with something slightly more probing than another scene of Jerry and George discussing the relative merits of ventriloquism or ankle socks.

It was, after all, a show about nothing. I just wish I had realized that before I embodied its facetious, pessimistic spirit for the past 10 years of my life.

Throughout the years, I grew accustomed to directing our mailman to deliver two sets of letters to our mailbox because the one across the street was nailed shut as part of a Dexter’s Laboratory cabinet setup. The candy bubble-blowing pumpkin, my personal favorite, became an object of fascination for neighborhood children and raccoons alike. And last year, a block party was considered when — after ten years of modifications and an army of helium tanks — the couple finally got the balloon spider’s nineteen legs to support its over-bloated belly.

Now here I am in Paris, where wine is cheaper than water, and there’s enough cheese to satisfy any Pixar rat. But after a two-day search through various marketplaces just to locate a pumpkin sizeable enough to survive a carving session, followed by a confusing conversation with my host brother about why I was hacking at said pumpkin on the kitchen table, I knew celebrating Halloween away from home was going to be the wrong kind of horror show.

The week leading up to the big day, I walked through the 15th arrondissement and noticed that — aside from a single orange balloon deflating in a corner shop window — Halloween n’existe pas.

Deciding that perhaps this particular city was just too grown-up for the holiday, I joined a group of American study abroad students for a trip to Parc Astérix just in time for a peur sur le parc adventure. Parc Astérix, reachable from Paris proper by a combination of metro, train, and bus, is the French answer to Disneyland. It’s based on the popular comic Astérix and Obélix, with a Greek and Roman ruins theme that makes it a fun place even for those who can’t stand any ride going faster than normal jogging pace.

As we waited in line for the bus, I looked for signs of hope, evidence that the Halloween-faithful still walked among us. Thirteen out of 150 line stragglers were dressed in Halloween gear: three were vampires, four had on witches’ hats, and the six others had on striped tights. But their costumes were so uninspired and unenthusiastic that the vampires could have used an infusion of new blood and the witches needed some magic — black or any other color would have sufficed. I’ve seen people more creatively dressed as they made their zombie-like walks to winter quarter 8 a.m. classes.

Parc Astérix tried, but the effort was as anemic as the neck of a vampire’s thrice-weekly victim. As we entered the park, statues lining the streets were garbed in Halloween get-ups, but only the non-French speakers paid them any attention. There was Astérix as Dracula, Obélix as a dumpy witch and their sidekick puppy as an unconvincing dinosaur. No reaction. Crowds of excited children passed the two-story-high foaming witches’ brew without a second glance. The lopsided castle towering in the background, draped in black and covered with cobwebs, excited just enough interest for one hasty snapshot at best.

These well-meaning tricks were no treat at all.

While I am used to the barely-concealed boredom or confusion on parents’ faces as their children jabber about Halloween, I can’t imagine a whole city’s indifference to the allure of joyful spookdom. Here I was, 3000 miles away from home, trying to grasp at those last strings of childhood goblin-induced glee, and the general feeling of indifference was damn near breaking my heart.

As I wandered back to my apartment in the morning, I decided that the French really don’t need an excuse to consume an exorbitant amount of sugar; every morning’s breakfast is a competition to eat as much chocolate as possible anyway. But for me, Halloween wasn’t the day when I wanted to branch out and embrace another culture. Give me my jack-o-lanterns, my hometown vampires and yes, even someone’s front lawn that looks like the Addams family is having a yard sale. And while I’ll miss the three-hour dinners with my host family and the well-done steak that’s still moving on the plate, what I’m really looking forward to is the next Halloween when I can glance out of my window and be greeted by the latest addition to my neighbor’s yard: Severus Snape’s cauldron of sparkling grape juice. Who needs French wine, anyway, on Oct. 31?

When I was little my favorite time of year was always Halloween. The relatively mild central Pennsylvania climate is usually at the apex of perfection in late October and the leaves are at their most beautiful — that wonderful shade of orange and red, the definition of perfection that only lasts for three or four days before they finally succumb to the winds of change and fall, blanketing the front yards until raked into piles that kids jump into and parents rake all over again until you have a big enough pile to burn. And you do burn it, and the wonderful smell of burning leaves pervades the air in the entire neighborhood as you ride your tricycle at first barely old enough and big enough to reach the pedals until you’re in the autumn of your 18th year driving around town one last time with your windows down and you see the piles of leaves and smell the familiar smell you know so well and you realize you’re going to be gone in just a few short weeks at college and just a few short weeks after that your first Halloween on your own.

By far my favorite part of Halloween is the costumes. I love seeing the hundreds of kids coming to our door, begging for candy, dressed up in elaborate costumes, either store-bought or self-assembled, recognizable Disney characters or ironic high schoolers thinking they’re being original (one guy came as “that guy” one time). Nobody could hold a candle to my dad’s costumes, though.

The author: a clown. Photo provided by the author.

My dad took Halloween very seriously. He went all out on the costumes, working for days, weeks, crafting an outfit fit for a king. Every neighborhood has one — that one house that goes all out making a scary haunted house, that one family that dons themed costumes that embarrass everybody equally, and, like my dad, that one parent who slaves over the costumes, working by hand, creating memories that last a lifetime.

For example, one year (I forget how old I was, the pictures suggest five or six) my dad made a T-Rex costume entirely from scratch. He took my measurements, bought the fabric and got to sewing. Sounds pretty cool, but also a bit tame, right? Lots of people’s parents make their costumes from scratch, so what, right?

Just wait. He put a pressure pad in the foot so that whenever I stomped on the ground it activated a circuit board he put in the costume that would make the eyes glow red and a voice box would activate and let out a tremendous dinosaur roar. I would go to a house, say trick or treat, people would remark how cute my costume was, hand me some candy, and I would stomp my foot, roar, strike a pose and run away to the next house, leaving them in my dust, gaping, marveling at what just happened, talking about the best costume they’ve ever seen.

This went on for years. One year he made a mummy costume out thousands of sheets of toilet paper – I don’t think the photo does it enough justice. When I was very little, maybe even my first or second birthday, he made an adorable little clown costume. One of my personal favorites was the headless horseman costume he made in fifth grade — he built this sort of outer body suit made out of foam and covered it with a ratty old coat that I put my arms through and I covered my head with another little piece of foam (painted red) to be morbid chunk of neck left over after the beheading. It was grotesque, and sick, and great.

What am I doing for Halloween this year, you ask? Hell if I know. I have an old Chicago Bears hat that looks like a legitimate decapitated bears head, I could probably make something out of that. Maybe see what I have in the dorm room, see what’s in that Halloween shop in Evanston, throw something together. It’s a lot less organized now that I’m on my own. A lot less meaningful.

The white Power Ranger dominating, as he was made to do. Photo provided by the author.

I remember trick or treating was a neighborhood event when I was little. My dad would put weeks of effort into creating the perfect costume; then I would meet up with my best friend Alex Chung and compare outfits; then we would begin the arduous trek up hill, starting with the houses at the top of the neighborhood and systematically making our way down, having gravity help us along the way (being the smart boys we were.) The Nelsons always turned their home into a haunted house, inviting trick-or-treaters inside to close their eyes and feel a bowl of intestines or eyeballs. The Sullivans would always have a full-fledged kiosk set up in their cul-de-sac, offering Dunkin’ Donuts doughnut holes and homemade apple cider to weary travelers. We would always return back to my house after a hard night of work and dump our pillowcases onto the floor, sort our candy, and dig in.

It was the same every year, it never changed. From my first Halloween to my 17th, the experience was always the same. It was always great. The costumes were always amazing, the decorations were always just the right mix of terrifying and fun, the candy was always delicious. It was the best day of the year.

I’m a busy guy. I perpetually have hundreds of pages of a novel to get caught up on or a poem to revise for class. It’s possible I might not make it out this weekend for Halloween festivities. That doesn’t mean I won’t be celebrating, though. You can take the kid out of Halloween but you can’t take the Halloween out of the kid. I’ll be wearing a makeshift costume on October 31, even if it’s just my zebra snuggie and my bear head. And I’m confident that back home my parents will be breaking out the gigantic cardboard box of decorations from the attic, the 20-year old sharpie that says “HALLOWEEN” on the side still clear as day.

I wasn’t always quite this diabolical though — and up until college, I went by the name Lexie. There were seven Alexes in my first grade class, so I changed my name to Lexie, which was my mom’s nickname for me at the time. I did it just so I could stand out a little.

But as I got a little older, I soon realized that I was the only Lexie not to own a pair of sparkly Sketchers or have good handwriting. It was tough for me, especially during adolescence, when only sweatpants and Proactiv protected me from some very hurtful comments. The abuse wasn’t just from kids though; in fact, in one of my report cards, I was actually referred to as “she” several times. I later realized that it couldn’t have just been a typo on the part of the teacher, since Ms. Boehm deliberately had to make the extra effort pressing the S button over and over again. So I began overcompensating, and I limited my yogurt intake and started taking dodge ball in gym a little too seriously. For my whole life I had let my name affect me and change the way I presented myself. I really allowed Lexie to shape me.

At Northwestern though, I haven’t encountered any such problems. On a college campus, the land of the meet and greet, names take on a whole new level of importance. If you’re able to remember 30 percent of the names of people you meet, you’re a legend. It does get tiring hearing the same thing over and over again, and especially right after that, hearing “but you probably get that all the time.” But, with such a unique name, I also feel blessed. Not only do people generally remember my name after being introduced, but also they are probably slightly intimidated because of the name’s connotation. People often tell me how cool they think it is too. Here, where there are so many new people to meet each and every day — I’m able to stand out, so I’ve made peace with my name. Comparisons between Superman’s arch-nemesis and I are inevitable, but it’s a conversation starter. As long as I own it, and embrace my inner Lex, I’ve been golden. If only I had accepted it in high school, rather than running from my name and identity, then maybe I would have been comfortable enough with my masculinity to read all of Jane Austen novels ever assigned to me.

Recently though, my newfound confidence was tested. I was in Norris, eating my standard buffalo chicken wrap, when I could swear I heard someone say “Lexie!” Could it be me, I thought? How could this person know? I thought I was covered with buffalo chicken wrap, since it’s about as manly as wraps get. But then I realized, it’s still not quite a sandwich. So, I frantically looked around me for any pre-teen girls who could be the real Lexies here, but there was not a single potential iCarly fan in sight. Weirdly enough, there wasn’t even a girl within a four-table radius. Now, I had decided it had to be me, so I turned my head and asked “ how did you know to call me that?” The girl, who I thought somehow knew my deepest secret, calmly said, “oh, I’m sorry. I was just saying ‘Let’s see’ because I was trying to find my flashcards from my bag.” I explained that I used to go by Lexie and that it was my mistake. She told me not to be so paranoid, but thought it was very funny that that used to be my name. After that, we hit it off and talked for about an hour. Eventually, I went back to my man-wrap, with a new friend and a renewed appreciation for the I and the E at the end of my name that I’d thrown by the wayside a couple of years ago.

It was, bar none, the single most uncomfortable dinner of my life.

It was Saturday, October 3 and I had decided to go see Zombieland with a few friends. The movie was enjoyable and everything I hoped it would be, nothing more or less. The movie let out around 10:30 p.m. and I decided that the group was hungry and we should swing by and get some food on the way back.

Enter the birthplace of my nightmares called What the Food.

For those of you who don’t know, What the Food is the new restaurant in the 800 block of Clark Street, across from Quartet Copies. I had heard the location was cursed (in that no restaurant has ever really strived there), but I didn’t believe it.

Until now.

We noticed the shoddily made Fed-Ex Kinko’s advertisement outside the restaurant and I somehow coaxed my friends into trying the place out. I pulled open the door and followed them in. Matt Connolly pointed out the “CASH ONLY” signs written in scrawled-on Sharpie on the back of tax forms and I immediately began to question the establishment. Emily Kellner pointed out that only about two lights were on in the whole restaurant — two dim overhead chandeliers — and that the main room resembled a basement dungeon.

The waitress came over and handed us each two different menus, one that appeared to be hastily printed off from Microsoft Word and a larger, laminated menu that would have seemed legit had it not been from an entirely different restaurant. She hands us the menus and then walks to the back of the shop, picks up an old 1950s era rotary phone, sits on a stool, and just talks into the phone while staring at us for what feels like a good five minutes. She lovingly cradles the phone in both hands, how you might hold an infant, but to her face as if she were about to devour it.

The head chef came out of the kitchen and introduced himself and half-jokingly, half-angrily told us he was getting ready to go home until we showed up. He laughed and asked my roommate, Stephen Ling, if he was Chinese or Korean of Filipino or what have you. All of us were uncomfortable at how forward the chef was being, but Stephen responded that he’s Chinese, and the two shared a few words in Mandarin before the chef brazenly told us to ignore the menus and asked us what food we like. He said he wanted What the Food to be a sort of home cooking away from home type of establishment for students. We all balked at answering such a general question — “what food do you like?” Seriously?

We gave him our orders (he doesn’t believe me that restaurants in Evanston make sweet and sour tofu) and he decided to whip us up whatever the hell he felt like. Our waitress returned and took our drink orders, informing us that they ran out of ice. I matched eyes with Vanessa Dopker, sitting across from me, and we were both thinking the same question (taken as a direct quote from my Twitter, the archives of which I kept during the encounter and became a major source of inspiration for this story) — “How does a restaurant run out of ice? Can’t you, you know, make more?” The lack of ice also cued us in to a possible lack of freezer, something we didn’t want to know about in a restaurant.

It was around this time that I realized a major source of the ambience, or lack thereof — there was no music playing at all. Usually restaurants have some background music or white noise playing for you to sort of filter out, but this place was deathly silent. There was no background music and we were the only party in the restaurant. So when we were silent, a deafening hush fell over the grounds and when we talked, our voices carried to all corners of the building. We had to watch what we said, knowing full well that the waitress could hear everything and (presumably) relay the information through the old rotary telephone.

Matt asked the chef where the restroom was and he paused and responded, “Northwestern.” Then there was a really blatant, uncomfortable, three-second pause until the chef laughed, slowly putting a hand on Matt’s shoulder, and pointed in the back corner. All of us grimaced and died a little inside. Matt got up to use the restroom and when he returned, he told us about the cobweb-covered ladder in the corner leading up to the attic, a scene straight out of a horror movie. Matt also pointed out after we toasted jokingly “To Friends!” that this is how every trailer for a horror movie starts — a lighthearted toast followed by scenes of axe murderers and knife-wielding maniacs.

As we waited for our food to arrive, another group of students passed by the window and began reading the menus taped up outside. Matt got up and went outside the restaurant, telling them how uncomfortable it was in there and how they should just keep on walking. They glanced in at us and I was subtly giving them the universal signal for “bolt.” We were all a little afraid Matt was going to seize the opportunity and bolt himself, leaving us stranded.

Our food arrived and the dishes looked like variations of the same meal — the chef ignored “what foods we liked” and made whatever he wanted to with chicken, fish and tofu as the only substitutes. I pointed out that mine tasted like cigarettes. Soon everybody else thought their dish tasted like cigarettes. We ate quickly in silence and when the check came, we split it evenly and left without saying a word.

We gathered our things, walked past the big storefront window (out of their line of sight) and just bolted. We all just sprinted as fast as we could and as far as we could, fearing for our lives and our safety but thankful that we somehow made it out of there. We sprinted right through Sherman, ignoring the DO NOT WALK sign, and regrouped outside of Einstein’s. We all embraced in a cheesy group hug, the bonds of friendship strengthened by the terrible ordeal.

I think my friends still blame me. I said I was hungry after the movie and when we passed What the Food, I convinced everyone to try it. I’ll admit the name lured me in. It’s interesting advertising, to say the least. I think they still blame me for the worst dining experience of their lives.

But I stand by my decision. If I hadn’t chosen to enter, I wouldn’t have this story to tell.

If you live across from 8 House, East, various nights, you’ve probably witnessed some nakedness, dancing, dancing whilst naked — and me dancing naked while drinking New Hampshire maple syrup out of a jug and jumping up and down on my bed. In any case, this display had nothing to do with you. While I might have turned off my lights and closed the curtains to preserve your modesty, I didn’t. But I wasn’t thinking of you. I was pretending it was summer and I was back in New Hampshire.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve worked a few seasons for a conservation organization in the White Mountains. They employ college students of the predominantly northeastern, hippie/granola persuasion, whom they house in remote cabins in the mountain woods.

My cabin is perched in a notch between two mountains. Amenities are limited; conventional showers nonexistent; the sleeping quarters are coed, with bunk-beds; and, most remarkably, you are largely removed from everything that qualifies as civilization. Only accessible by mountain trails, the cabins are miles – on foot – from wireless internet, shops, and all people who would judge you for looking like a hobo and smelling like a body sweat cocktail.

I was so happy there.

Something about shared sleeping quarters coupled with complete social isolation breeds intimacy. The four of us working out of this cabin were completely gone on one another. It’s hard to describe.

When my editor asked what I was going to write about for this piece, I said, love.

Love? He said.

Love. I said.

I said, I lived with three other people in a cabin in the woods and we were so in love.

” Like…awkward in love?”

And that got to the heart of the matter. When living up in these cabins, there’s an obvious distinction between relationships down in “the valley” and those in the mountains. Down amongst the flatlanders, love is always kind of awkward. It’s not something to be rushed in to, and certainly not to be shared with anyone you haven’t scrutinized. There are all sorts of conventions and maneuverings that require close calculation.

In the valley, a love affair between four people would certainly complicate things to the point of obscene awkwardness. –OMG. Whose turn is it to call whom?

Not to imply that I was involved in some sort of fabulous four-way sex house. There was, in all honesty, nothing sexual about it. It was close, and physical, and, in a way, romantic, but it was pure, chaste, and Love.

I remember the first day that I went hiking with one of my cabin-mates. We climbed to a look-out high above the notch and sat, looking down at our house. We fell into this weirdly intense conversation about the relative importance of rational decision making. And in the quiet closeness of that high spot, I reached out and held his hand. Though relative strangers, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. I imagine it’s hard not to feel close to someone when you live with every naked, unwashed inch of them.

And that was how it started. Intimate conversations during the day moved fluidly into raucous, unselfconscious dance parties at night. Four people rocking out to Kanye West’s Flashing Lights should be extremely uncomfortable— but it wasn’t. Nobody knows how to have a good time like scruffy mountain kids. There was rarely a day that didn’t close with a sundown dance party, clothing optional. If I’m honest, I’ll admit that there was bourbon involved. But it was good bourbon. Class.

I imagine that this whole scene sounds completely unappealing to some. But try to picture yourself in the loveliest little building you can imagine. Fill the house with music and good food. Then drop in your favorite landscape. Finally, add a very small circle of similarly-interested people. And cut everything else off. That’s what it’s like.

When we hiked out for the last time, there was a general sense of desperation, an understanding that we were leaving behind an ideal life. Everybody had some pressing obligation to rush back to: college, work. I suppose dance parties and Bulleit aren’t sustainable as full-time activities.

The relationships, though, are hardest to relinquish. In the normal run of things, sexual relationships are preeminent, and then, if you’re lucky, you and a partner of your choice will learn how to love. In the mountains, love is less cynical. And what’s the harm in it?

I miss being able to love people. I miss being able to hold someone as an expression of care. I miss spontaneous break-out dancing, platonic hand-holding, hugging, communal napping.

I’ll be forever on the lookout for people with whom I’m more myself than I was in the mountains this summer. My real self is more wide-eyed and affectionate than I’m capable of being in society.

So I suppose I know why I leave the curtains open at night: I intend to be a beacon of love.  Do you hear me, Plex?  A freakin’ Beacon!  Kanye up, Clothes off.

There is a great slope at Boston University Tanglewood Institute where several dozen sheds sit. It is a strange sight to the outsider, neatly trimmed grass, bordered by trees, and scattered anywhere from 10 to 50 feet apart clapboard shacks with roofs of grey. A black asphalt path snakes up the hill leading to a green plateau and beyond, farther than the eye can see, a tennis court, the administrative building and a large field. This was what I saw, that Sunday morning, when my father drove back to the Albany airport, leaving me entirely alone. There was quietness in the air. Hardly any other students had arrived, none of my dormmates in Hawthorne House had moved in yet. The manila folder I was given upon checking in had no activities planned until that afternoon, so I walked forward, curious and anxious about what was within the strange buildings dotting the landscape.

I wonder, looking back, exactly how it felt to be there. I wish could place myself back on that Massachusetts soil, music books in hand, wearing that same denim skirt and black v-neck tank top that was cut so low it was a blessing my mother wasn’t there to constantly trail after me, pulling it up. But this is impossible, so I will have to satisfy myself with an approximation. There was confusion, I still did not know what the shacks were for; awe, the day was beautiful and I blind to what lay ahead for me; and fear, I was 15 years old and utterly alone. This last emotion pulsed through my head as I reached a shed near the border of the trees and hesitantly pulled open the door. I do not know what I was expecting, garden tools perhaps, storage of some kind, not a dirty cement floor with a gleaming Yamaha piano sitting atop it. A strange relief flooded me; they were makeshift practice rooms. It was so obvious an answer, this was a summer music program after all, a place to practice was essential. The irony of the scene, a beautiful concert grand in a space fit for bags of soil and dirty spades, struck me as I finally sat down, opened the key cover, and played a C scale, relieved at the sudden experience of simplicity.

The following three weeks, and the six more which were to follow the next summer, are difficult to piece together. It is strange, I was there to play piano, to have master classes with my teacher, Maria Claudet Jaguaribe, and to perform in an end-of-term recital, yet I hardly remember this at all. I can envision Maria’s wrinkled face bloom into life as she told us of the doomed love Brahms had for Clara Schumann, yet I recall little of the advice she gave me on my Rachmaninoff or Beethoven. I can envision myself lying on a blanket, wasting away afternoons playing cards and eating chocolate with my friends, though it is impossible to remember how often I practiced and exactly what progress I made. I suppose it must be said then, that I do not remember Tanglewood because of what I accomplished there, but rather because of who I met.

My first roommate was Katherine Yeh. She was tall and willowy, with a slight British accent and wonderfully smooth tan skin. I remember her telling me about her fancy boarding school in England where the Queen once came to visit. She spent half the nights we lay up in bed talking, explaining the great love she had for one of our fellow pianists, Jeff. He had horrible technique but she could forgive this for his beautiful smile and thick black hair. There was John Sullivan, the stereotype of a pretentious adolescent from New England. He had a vast knowledge of Richard Wagner, an unhealthy love for Beethoven and an immense sweet tooth. The competitions he and I had to who could eat the most cookies in the dining hall and the stories he told of baking brownies and fudge endeared him to me forever. Kate McDermott lived down the hall from me. Nearly every morning I was charged with waking her up by pounding as loudly as possible on her door. She had uncontrollably frizzy brunette hair and suffered from tendonitis, though she played Chopin beautifully. I still consider her one of the smartest people I have ever met. Kate’s neighbor, Loren Loicono, was a composer from Long Island with an overbearing mother and an acute obsession with neatness. She told me she loved James Joyce before I even knew who he was and obsessed with Julian, one of her fellow composers, who had long hair and wore a yellow raincoat and hat when it rained. It was a horrible case of unrequited love, one which often resulted in her compulsively standing under his lit window at night, hoping he would look out. Luis Ortiz lived off a diet of hamburgers, French fries, and Ritz crackers. Small and Peruvian, he only reached my chin, yet his undying love for both basketball and Bach guaranteed my affection for him. Last was Christopher Lim, a privileged Korean American who lived with his sister and parents in a townhouse in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He had a horribly awkward haircut and dressed as though he were a businessman going golfing, yet the love he and I shared a love for Brahms and our mutual admiration of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s assistant concert mistress assured us we would never run out of conversation.

More than random eccentricities, I fell in love with these people because I felt at home with them. The connection is difficult to explain, perhaps it lies in the devotion all of us had to an art often ignored by young people, yet it was present from the moment we met. There was no awkward conversation, few simple formalities. It was one of those rare moments when you meet individuals you immediately connect to. Looking back, this feels like a fossil from another life, I had never felt that accepted and understood before and have yet to since. It is tragic to think this sort of pure, innocent happiness can never be replicated, for we have all moved on with our lives. We are either in school or recently graduated, exploring new things, traveling, studying. Without the physical connection of being in the same place, it has become difficult to stay in touch. Yet I still love them, not simply for who they are but because, no matter how selfish this sounds, of how they made me feel.

Surely I didn’t know, that Sunday morning playing a C scale in a shed, the wonderfulness of the individuals I was about to meet. Who I would go out to dinner with on my 16th birthday and be presented with a three-dimensional piano card made out of paper with Skittles and coupons for ice cream inside. Who would eat French fries with me during the intermission of BSO concerts, arguing over whether the orchestra was or was not in tune. Who laid under the stars with me, wet grass poking into our backs, and listened to the world’s greatest classical musicians perform as if we were the only members of the audience. It is these details I remember, it is these details which sifted through my head at the end of my second summer, driving away in a chauffered airport van, wondering if I would ever be that happy again. The knowledge of an era lost a gripping gloom, as if growing older was suddenly a discernible sensation of pain and loss.

On November 20, 2008, Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University won the U.S. Professor of the Year award. Wesch made a name for himself studying the social implications of YouTube. His “anthropological introduction to Youtube,” posted on the site itself, now has well over a million views. In it he discusses how YouTube, along with other forms of communication on the Internet, have transformed society by creating new forms of community. When I watched the video several weeks ago, I admit to being moved by Wesch’s celebration of how the Internet has brought humans closer together and created new forms of identity as we move into the 21st century.

By now we’re pretty used to hearing about how the Internet has transformed our lives and how our generation is not only used to it, but also dependent on it. But amidst the emphatic discussion among those who praise the convenience, economic opportunity and even freedom that computers have given us, we often forget how much skepticism and even antipathy the very same people have towards the “new forms of community” that Wesch describes.

While we praise Facebook for its ability to keep us in touch with people we might otherwise loose contact with, we retain an appropriate cynicism over such relationships, which are trivialized to the occasional sentence-length update on our news feed. Online degrees are generally held in contempt by both students and faculty at “real” colleges and universities. Admittedly, it’s easy to see how the above examples require a “human face” that electronic exchanges can’t provide. But even Wikipedia, which provides us not with interactions, but with relatively objective information (and whose accuracy is comparable to the encyclopedia Britannica) is frequently degraded as a cheap source of reference.

The contempt that we constantly express towards these online interactions and others is enough to convince me that the Internet is not an entirely positive addition to human society. I often wonder where this distrust comes from. For those of us who remember the early- and mid-1990s, perhaps some of it is simply a natural conservative impulse. During our formative years, making plans required picking up a phone to call a friend. Accessing information necessitated sifting through an encyclopedia or yellow pages. Like any form of massive social change — from the spread of Christianity in the ancient world to electing the first black president of the U.S.– it would make sense of the rise of the Internet to elicit a heavy conservative backlash. If this is the cause of our distrust of the Internet, will future generations, born after the late ‘90s, accept the Internet more than us?

I think that there is a more fundamental reason for our distrust — something that will always prevent humans from being able to separate the exchange of even the most impersonal information from the social context that surrounds it. It is an attitude that is perhaps most eloquently summed up in the quote that begins this essay. In Book II of Emile, or On Education, (published in 1762) Jean-Jacques Rousseau expresses his contempt for the ways in which the abstract epistolary transfer of information can affect something as real as human emotion and even physical condition. He uses this as one of many examples of how advanced society can be artificial and have the power to corrupt morality. Fortunately for his sake, Rousseau did not live to anticipate a time in which one out of every six marriages take place between individuals who met online.

Rousseau’s commentary, though perhaps a bit extreme, reveals a basic fact about humans. We are ultimately incapable of reducing our interactions and our search for knowledge to the mere exchange of information that occurs between machines. The ways in which we receive information will always be as important as the information itself. No matter how much we try to divorce our emotions or our humanity from our search for facts and knowledge, we can never be entirely impersonal or objective. Some would view our inability to extract exchange of information from social context to be something that will hold us back in our efforts to become more technologically advanced. But I think that those same people would also believe that such inability is an essential part of what makes us human.