Senescence, Or Something Like It

I have found, of late, that I have a positive dearth of patience with the young. Or at least those who are younger than I am. Eighteen-year-olds are tolerable, I suppose, they have an idea of what is what. They don't realise it fully, but at least they have few illusions. I feel like I have superseded my illusions and I do not like it: this was one race I wasn't supposed to win.

I don't mean to sound old and embittered, God knows, I am not nearly aged enough to own that level of cantankerousness, but I recently had coffee with a friend who brought his protégé along. While my friend and I chattered away amicably, I think the protégé felt, oh, neglected perhaps. I lauded his valiant attempts at trying to join in the conversation, and smiled benignly at the "ten-dollar words", the contrivances whipped out in an attempt to hold his own. It was, as he would probably say, "Rather endearing"! How familiar this all seemed! 'I was such a little snot! Just like this one!' I recalled fondly. We played along, and it was adorable. Initially, at least.

Things began to go downhill when  my friend had to excuse himself to take a phone-call, and his protégé and I were left alone. We talked perfunctorily for a few minutes, and finally he asked me where I went to school. I told him, and his face...changed. I'll admit, mine is a charming State school, and yes, I remember my face 'changing' too when  I had filled out an application for this place. Oh, very well! It was my safety school, and, in the end, when it boiled down to pure economics, I realised that this was my best bet! I felt, for some unfathomable (t)reason to explain this to the protégé, and he smiled sweetly, indulgently: his face was my face from fifteen minutes ago. 

"Perhaps, economics isn't the only criterion, hmm?" he questioned with a cowing politesse, that made me feel like a poor cousin.

"No, not the only criterion, certainly," I responded. "But a vitally important one, wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, quite. But, you will agree, that reputations are important as well. Imagine, people of our breeding associated with commonplace schools!" he laughed.

"You cannot deny, however, that paying for a reputation and a reputation alone is the worst kind of snobbery!" I trilled.

"I wonder, then, sir, about the Dior label on your shirt!" he exclaimed affably.

"Your Lacoste amphibian inspires similar wonderings, monsieur!" I countered charmingly.

"The point I am trying to make is that, surely, you cannot be satisfied in a farming community?" he asked.

"You do assume, sir, that it is a farming community. Not so. Also, I shan't lie, I really thought that I had settled for something below my station, only to learn that things like station are superficial things that must be indulged in as superficially as possible." I explained, a bit passionately.

"How noble." he responded. He didn't look like he believed me, in fact he went as far as to hum a ditty from 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' (A Match Made in Heaven)- a Hindi film about a young, vivacious woman who marries a staid, older man only to live in connubial bliss. It made me mad.

"And where are you applying?"

He proceeded to rattle off the names of elite academies in India, and of course, the Imperial Eight; the Indian schools were his "Plan B". I didn't have the heart to say anything polite, but I did have the spleen.

"I wish you luck." 

"I will get in, I know I shall." 

"Such confidence is admirable."

I wanted to ask him what recourse he had if he didn't make it in. A Plan B-01 perhaps? I wanted to tell him that he was being a fool, and that, when the chips were down, for an international student, economics was the sole criterion, that one was beatifically fortunate if one found a school that was intellectually sound and didn't cost a King's Ransom, even if one's father was a King or a noble, that scholarships shouldn't be scorned at as 'charity'. 

Reading over that last section, I find that I do sound old and embittered. I hadn't failed, I had just chosen differently, followed an instinct, a call that influenced the tides in my blood vessels, and I had made good. I don't disapprove of the Imperial Eight, but of the questions of 'breeding' and 'station' that come with them. I have friends, dear friends, at these places, and they deserve to be there because they got in meritocratically, and not because of the fact that they were "raised a certain way". Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why I needed to placed in the Spitsbergen so that I could fully comprehend the nature of superficial things.

My friend had returned by then and sensed the tension in the air and managed to diffuse the tension by bringing up a compelling topic of conversation, it's a skill of his that I have long admired. If anything, they are probably very grateful and awe-struck by this skill of his at Princeton! The protégé and I parted cordially; we knew that our paths would probably cross only under the rarest of circumstances. Later, when my friend asked me what I thought of him, I gave him the usual platitudes, but my friend knew. His laugh at the end of my "perfectly delightful" told me that he knew that I hated that kid. Envy is what this is, and an envy that stems from an animated wistfulness that yearns to be that innocently reprehensible again, to be able to have those illusions, and water-tight plans that do not yield to any force. I miss it. I miss it so.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy!