\Hey, girl with messy hair!"" I look up at some dude in a Bucky T-shirt yelling at me as I'm walking past his third-story balcony.
""You are... NOT COOL!!!""
My heart sinks. I am not cool. Why? Why? What did I do this time?
Oh no. Maybe I'm walking weird again. Maybe I've relapsed into my childhood pigeon-toed tendencies and now I'm doomed to roam the campus with my feet pointed inward, continuously hurling my body forward while trying not to tumble to an embarrassing injury.
I mean, it's no big deal. I'm spending the rest of the day with my eyes glued to my tiny feet, concentrating on moving in a straight line whenever steps are required. And I'm trying to minimize the number of paces it takes to get everywhere by stretching my legs as far as they'll go. And I've changed my shoes. But you know, no big deal.
So not a big deal in fact, that I blurt out the entire story as soon as I see some friends.
""Why would he say something like that?!"" I'm hoping my peers will offer a concrete explanation. I'm hoping they'll tell me that my formerly confident saunter has become a bowlegged disaster. Or day-old peanut butter is stuck to both my face and my butt. Or I have a booger. Something.
""It's just the balcony mentality,"" Kristen says matter-of-factly.
""The balcony what?""
""Haven't you ever noticed people always yell at you when they're on their balconies? It's arbitrary authority. They get this feeling of infallibility when they're up there, and they use it to control you. I call it the balcony mentality,"" Kristen explains.
I let this all sink in.
No way. Just because I've become a self-conscious, paranoid maniac since breakfast doesn't mean I've surrendered control to a meathead on a balcony. Or does it? Maybe it's merely my lack of an outdoor chillin' area attached to the second floor of my house talking here, but it seems counterintuitive that in a culture so obsessed with manipulating others, we readily forfeit authority over ourselves.
But I'm walking impressively straight. And, unexpectedly, my nasal cavities seem clear.
So, is it truly possible that we're more likely to pawn off responsibility for our actions to say, our friends, the president in a round of Asshole, or some generic poli sci major on a rickety balcony than think for ourselves?
I mean, it's no big deal. Even if we are avoiding self-control like green on football Saturdays, what does it matter? Even if we're allowing random people to command us, it's not as if it's a major problem. It's not as though our indifference spans so far as to determine established authority, like say, government.
Take our president for example. He's actually got a lot going for him. He's got a face like a monkey, an IQ like a monkey, and some keen-eyed journalists say he's quite the banana-eater. Oh yeah, and I've also heard his elaborate habitat in D.C. includes quite the impressive open-air playpen. About twenty stories off the ground, I'm told.
But don't listen to me. I'm not very cool.
Emily can be reached at ewinter@wisc.edu.
