Monthly Archive for April, 2008

If I close my eyes and gently rub and squeeze my earlobes, it reminds me of mochi.

Last weekend, I went to a Religious Studies conference held on campus.  It was Friday and Saturday, all day.  There were several good lectures, but I still felt mildly out of place, since I only knew one or two other people.  As a result, it forced me to meet some new people and make some friends.

I found myself talking to the only two other students there, both of whom knew each other and were Religious Studies majors.  At one point in the conversation, one of them said, “So, does anybody know what’s up with Steve?”

It was at that point when I finally noticed a unique character sticking out among the well dressed scholars from around the country.  There was a man standing awkwardly in a small circle of conversation, looking amused and not adding much.  He was on the older side of the age range, probably in his 40s or 50s, wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and a really old Steelers hat.  He had shoulder-length hair and enough stubble to make you think it was at least in the awkward stage of growing a beard.  On top of all of this, his required nametag merely said “STEVE.”

So here we stood, enjoying the free appetizers, wondering who Steve was.  One of the guys was convinced he had seen him before, and he was pretty certain it was at a homeless shelter.  The strange thing was that in the few other conversations these students had had with Steve, he was always a very well spoken individual and had known about all of the other conferences and community activities in the area.

The conclusions we eventually came to was that he spent his life going from event to event, finding free food.  As a result of constantly being surrounded by academics, he became fairly intellectual.

Of course, we all assumed it was the free food that drew him to the conference.  As students, we were completely aware of this aspect of the conference, abusing the breakfast, lunch, dinner, appetizers, snacks, coffee, and wine bar.  But we’re students — it’s expected of us.  How dare an adult encroach upon our territory.