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College Comment
Coffee with Myself
May
2003
by Deborah Friedell '03
Deborah Friedell is an English major in Berkeley College. Her writing
has appeared in the online magazine Salon.
She is
slurping hot cocoa, amazed as I prepare my coffee.
"I still can't believe I'm ever going to drink that," she says.
Although she greeted
me rudely—she does not like my clothes—my younger self is
politer than I had expected. She offers pleasantries before the
rush of questions: Are you a Rhodes Scholar? Engaged? Skull and
Bones? I disappoint her, but she does not say so.
I very much want her
to like me. In an attempt to impress her with how much I have learned,
I try to use words with meanings she does not yet know. I have taken
her to Koffee? because I knew she would find it cool and collegiate,
a little intimidating.
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My
younger self dislikes my clothes. Can my future self help
me find a New York apartment?
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I hand her the Yale
College Programs of Study: Avoid this, take that, nothing taught
by him, anything with her. I make her take out her notebook, and
I begin dictating names of people to avoid, dinner invitations to
decline, roommate offers she must refuse, summer jobs she must not
take. My list of disappointed hopes trails on, and I continue listing
them even though I can see she is shaken. In four years I have done
the best I could for her, but it is not enough. I am angry at the
girl for wanting so much more from me than I can give, and I hate
myself for not being able to please her. More than anyone else,
I had wanted her to be proud of me. Instead, her lower lip trembles,
and I fear she is going to cry. There is a poem from which I think
she will recite: "O Visions ill foreseen! better had I liv'd ignorant
of future, so had borne my part of evil only, each day's lot enough
to bear"—but then I remember that she has never read Milton.
I tell the girl sitting in front of me to make sure she takes English
125. She writes it down without knowing what it is. "Hand me that,"
I say, reaching for her notebook. I begin scribbling: Morning runs
to East Rock. Afternoons in the Beinecke Library, where genie librarians
will bring forth manuscripts by whomever she wishes. The favorite
teaching assistant who'll let her in on faculty sex scandals. The
seminar that will meet for reunion dinners. The professor who, after
a rough class, will take her to the Elizabethan Club for tea and
a kind word. A best friend.
I write and write,
and when I look up she's gone.
From behind, a familiar
voice asks if she may sit down—there are a few things she would
like to tell me. She is wearing a suit; she is drinking mineral
water.
"That's OK," I say.
I tell her I'm willing to strike out on my own, thanks. I gather
up the two empty mugs, then hesitate. If she has any advice on how
to find a New York apartment, I suppose we can make an exception
for just a few minutes. 
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