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When Alicia Franklin '14 bid farewell to Owen Wilkins '14 last Thursday night, he was not deceived by her cheerful promise of "See you later!"
For he knew that, in fact, he would not being seeing Franklin later.
"Do I want to see her later?" he asked. "Well, of course. She's tall…she's blonde…and has a great personality! But 'see you later'? That's totally code for, 'Thanks for sitting with me at Jo's so I didn't look like an antisocial loser. But even though I'm flipping my hair and laughing spastically at every thing you say, I don't actually like you enough to make solid hang-out plans later. So I'm just going to say 'See you later!' as a fake promise that maybe we'll have dinner together next week, when really I'm just saying it in anticipation of the inevitable time three months from now when we find our bodies pressed together in the lobby of Salomon as we try to elbow our way out the door after class."
Wilkins said that he eagerly anticipated the Salomon encounter.
"If she really wanted to hang out again," the freshman went on to explain, "we would have scheduled something. She would have said, 'Do you want to have dinner at the Gate at 7:15 next Sunday?' But she didn't."
"Not that I'm offended," Wilkins added. "Her loss. I am a man who has conquered many a Chemistry problem set and fire-breathing dragon."
"On the Internet," he clarified. "The dragons are only on the Internet."
Wilkins, an aspiring double concentrator in Computer Science and Psychology, was also not fooled by Franklin's nebulous promise that they should "do this again sometime."
"What," he said, "so I'm just going to be hanging out in my room one day, and you're going to mysteriously text me about dinner? And I'm just supposed to drop everything and join you? What if I have just eaten a sandwich from the Blue Room? What if I am currently enjoying my Blue Room sandwich in the company of many exotic women?"
Wilkins confirmed that he did indeed know many exotic women, though he admitted most of them were from an online role-playing game where he is known merely as "The Wizard."
"I am a man of action," stated Wilkins. "Except when I am napping. And eating. I don't have time to wait around for you to text me about dinner at some undefined point in time. If you really wanted to share the divine experience of a spicy with with me, you would have scheduled it a week in advance."
Wilkins uses a full-size planner to schedule all his important engagements at least a week in advance. Commitments like "study," "shave," and "find the magic dagger to open level two" fill his extensive to-do list.
"Some people offer paltry excuses like, 'Oh, I'm so busy,'" Wilkins continued. "But you know what? So am I. I'm probably busier than you are. But even if I have a chemistry midterm, a problem set, and an online battle with a Dark Lord all in one week, I still make time for the people who matter."
His roommate confirmed that Wilkins does indeed devote at least half an hour to his daily phone conversation with his mother.
