Thumbs Up

Good Grades – You flip to the final page of your paper and find the grade you’ve always wanted. For once you’ve actually managed to succeed. Now it’s time to turn it all around, to live the life you were meant to live, to make your dreams come true. Laughing victoriously, your face flush with freedom-fire, you strut out of the classroom and accidentally trip on your untied shoelaces and fall into the hall and then hit a passerby and then fall the other way into a water fountain and then break the water fountain and then slip in the puddle of water and then have hot coffee poured all over you by some guy with hot coffee who tripped in the gigantic puddle of water and then get a phone call from your mom that says your hamster choked to death on a jellybean and then destroy your phone by dropping it in the puddle of water. Life is good.

James Joyce – There exists a picture of James Joyce in which he is wearing a suit, sitting in a field with his head in his hands, sporting an undercut and an eyepatch.  In the background three people frolic merrily, while Joyce stares at the ground. For this picture alone, the man deserves a thumbs up. Also, it’s always fun to carry a copy of Ulysses around and stare down your nose at everyone.

Dining Hall Cereal – Filling up a small plastic dish with seven different brands of cereal always give us a sick thrill. We giggle like wee children as we spin the little cereal dispenser wheel, watching with rapturous delight as cereal pours forth. When we walk over to the counter, we like to do a little jig and laugh our merry heads off. Then we sprint off to a secluded corner, hunch over the bowl like a goblin, and shove cereal down our throats with our bare hands.

Rapturous Delight – What a fantastical phrase. It makes anything you do sound goofy and vaguely British. Try it. That trip to the bathroom filled me with rapturous delight! See, works like a charm.

Rocking Back and Forth While Holding a Pillow – Sometimes it’s the only way to handle life. “Go to sleep, you little babe,” you whisper to the pillow, your eyes bloodshot and crazed.

Thumbs Down

The Housing Lottery – It’s that time of year again. If you listen closely you can hear the sounds of weeping freshmen coming from Upper. It sounds as though the ninth friend was just put down like Old Yeller. College Road awaits, my brothers and sisters.

Birds Pooping on You – It’s a sign that the universe hates you. What did you do to deserve this? You’re a good person. You sometimes hold the door for people and occasionally do … good stuff for service and stuff. And now you’re walking around with a big ol’ smear of bird doo-doo on your face like some kind of chump.

Featured Image by Peter Komka / MTI via AP Photo