Gentle Sir Philip Sidney, thou knew'st what belong'd to a scholler; thou knew'st what pains, what toil, what travail conduct to perfection.
10.08.2007
New Rings on fingers
I'm bemused to see not one, not two, but three of the young women in my first-year composition class sporting engagement rings this week. How in the world does one get engaged to be married in September or October of one's first year at college?
Perhaps these young ladies came to school already in relationships with guys who wanted to demarcate that relationship for a variety of reasons: anything aas innocuous as a token and as selfish as a claim-staker -- probably somewhere in between.
An older guy I dated briefly at the end of high school wanted to send me to Auburn with his fraternity pin -- effectively a precursor to engagement. I wasn't ready to be serious in any case, but my parents, who had been in the Greek system and knew exactly what this gesture meant, had a conniption.
"I am grown at length to see into the vanity of the world more than ever I did, and now I condemn myself for nothing so much as playing the dolt in print . . . . There is nothing that if a man list he may not wrest or pervert. I cannot forbid any to think villainously, Sed caveat emptor, let the interpreter beware; for none ever heard me make allegories of an idle text."
2 comments:
Perhaps these young ladies came to school already in relationships with guys who wanted to demarcate that relationship for a variety of reasons: anything aas innocuous as a token and as selfish as a claim-staker -- probably somewhere in between.
An older guy I dated briefly at the end of high school wanted to send me to Auburn with his fraternity pin -- effectively a precursor to engagement. I wasn't ready to be serious in any case, but my parents, who had been in the Greek system and knew exactly what this gesture meant, had a conniption.
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