Partly Cloudy, 64°
Zach Cohen ’15 from Manhattan checked himself into Health Services this morning after experiencing “mild nausea and intense confusion” at the notion that not all members of the class of 2015 hailed from New York City.
“It started to get weird during the ice-breaker games when people started sharing their hometowns,” Cohen said. “Seattle, Nebraska, Poland. Are those neighborhoods in Queens or something?”
“When I asked him where Seattle was, the kid said ‘Pacific Northwest,’” Cohen added. “That’s a pretty pretentious name for the Upper West side.”
At the ice cream social, Cohen tried to connect with his fellow students.
“He seemed nice, but I thought it was weird that he kept asking me what street I lived on. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I don’t see how he would have heard of Roland Lane in Sioux City,” said Jake Krueger ’15.
“I tried to be nice. I asked everyone what camp they went to, where they went to Hebrew School and whether or not they went to Horace Mann, but everyone just kept joking around with me and talking about far away lands like Pennsylvania and Vermont,” Cohen said.
“One kid told me he was from Hawaii, and he got upset when I laughed. ‘No one is from Hawaii,’ I chuckled, ‘that’s like being from Disney World.’”
His distress continued when no one understood his frequent references to “the City.”
“Zach kept saying that he was from ‘the city,’ but we all tried to explain to him that this was quite vague and gave us no real clue as to what city he called home,” said Sarah Hernandez ’14.
The New York area student soon began making references to specifics: “that H&H Bagels my mom likes to go to,” “Mahmoun’s Falafel,” “meatpacking district” and “my boy Rich who went to Dalton.”
“When I told my roommate he looked like that guy Rich who went to Dalton, his eyes went blank and he didn’t seem to understand what or whom I was talking about. Everybody knows Rich; kid’s a bro.”
