the hamilton cool knocked me down today and gave me a fat lip. and in broad daylight, too. the hamilton cool is a campus phenomenon. it is faux pas to express emotion of any kind. suddenly, students are too “cool” to smile or nod at strangers, or even say hello to their own friends. in commons, girls can’t even look at rice krispy treats. in the classroom, some appear unconcious while others are suddenly drowning in big words that they don’t really understand.
what really gets me is the breezeway. it’s long, high-traffic walkway that people flock across all day long. so, i don’t actually know a lot of people on this campus, but it’s just natural for me to smile at fellow humans (it’s why i never felt silly being the friendly sales associate the gap, i was always sincere!), especially if i’m passing them within four feet. but there are just some days when every person i pass seems to be very intently focused on the vacant air directly in front of them. so even before i smile, i feel shot down. and after that happens a couple of times, i don’t even want to try anymore. so i study the ground, gaze at the foliage along the path or squint at an imaginary, but quite fascinating object in the distance. sometimes i throw in a staged yawn, for effect.
so it occured to me, maybe that first person who passed me by robotically today used to be a smiler. what did it take to change her? maybe it was recent, maybe within the last month. maybe she was just having a stressful morning. maybe too many people had ignored her already this week. or maybe she burned out b/c no one has smiled at her since august 31st. is the same thing going to happen to all the freshman who were smilers when they showed up at hamilton? how many people arrive here pre-cooled?
what i realized today is that the hamilton cool is a cycle. everytime a friendly and good-intentioned someone like me casts a smile at an unsuspecting passerby and gets rejected with blatant ignorance, feigned preoccupation, or my favorite, the straight out blank stare (just warms my heart), they are that much less likely to try it again. by my second or third breezeway walk today, i had completely given up. but i glanced up by accident and made millisecond eye contact with a guy walking in the opposite direction. i swear, i saw the corners of his mouth start to turn skyward before he got shy and took it all back. it was like he had to remind himself not to smile. or, maybe he saw the hamilton cool in my very eyes.
quote of the day: “voices calling from a yellow road to come downstairs and say hello, don’t be shy just say hello” – guster
love always, em locke
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