I always imagined medical school to be filled with students who looked like they belonged on the set of the classic 80s nerd flick, Weird Science, kids whose profound love of those $6.99 fantasy books about sorcerers and interactive computer games (War of Warcraft, anyone?) got in the way they interacted with real live, human beings. While this proved to be mostly true, medical students are far more idiosyncratic than I thought - people who are afraid of strangers, people who love their hand sanitizers, and other kids who hate the Ottoman Empire with a fiery, burning passion.
One day, Bryan Bonder - aka B.Bo (a nickname made in the manner of J.Lo or LiLo) - joined our study group. B.Bo peered into my colorful living room and said, "Your house reminds me of my grandmother's, and it smells like it, too!" I was unsure how to react - maybe this was a Midwestern version of a compliment? After all, who doesn't love their warm, cuddly grandmother? At the same time, his comment pulled me into a downward spiral of neurosis. Did my supposedly contemporary, modern living room, swathed in warm reds and cool greens, really possess the prim, prudish decor of a matriarch? My entire design aesthetic had been called into question by a lanky Jewish kid called B.Bo. But here was the clincher - B.Bo had also told me my house smelled like his grandmother's. After I overcame my dizzying paranoia, I sniffed around my house and realized I had forgotten to take out the trash -oops!
Later that evening, the conversation turned to feminism and the state of modern gender relations. I always thought my perspective on women's issues was fresh, young, and hip; my ideas were the epitome of Generation Y, cutting edge, and gleaned and adapted from the recent publication, The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, and Vulnerability. When I started to articulate some ideas from Maureen Dowd's recent book, B.Bo piped up enthusiastically, "Mariam, you would get along great with my grandmother. You are just like her!" Not only did I smell and decorate like B.Bo's grandmother, but our personalities were one and the same. Who would have thought? A Pakistani girl from North Carolina and B.Bo's Jewish grandmother brought together in complete harmony in the crevices of B.Bo's mind.
After my conversation with B.Bo, I began to ask myself some philosophical questions or the Big Question of Life. Was there a grandmother lurking deep within my twentysomething soul? Or was B.Bo so emotionally tied to his grandmother that he saw a little piece of her in every person he met and every place he encountered? Unfortunately, these questions did not have easy answers.
--By Mariam, an MS1 who is now afraid of the North Carolina sun after months and months in Toledo, a place where the sun don't ever shine.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
You forgot one more similarity, you dress like a granma too. Haha. Just kidding! The Ottoman Empire must fall! Oh wait, it already did, hmmm, where do I go from here?
yo gull where is the shout out for seein your favorite people last night, n why didnt u come to our house after sunday school?!?!?
I bet B.Bo doesn't see his grandmother in me - that means you must really be like his grandmother. And by the way, I like to think I would fit into a 80s nerd flick, thank you very much.
dude, this is wierd, my grandmother wrote a blog just like this one...
Maybe if you stopped knitting B.Bo so many cute little doilies and baking him pies and stuff this would be less of a problem?
Thank you Ashot and BBo for confirming that I have grandma like tendencies. Apparently, grandmas + me shop at Nordstrom's.
Anna-liisa (I like how your name has 2 i's!) - I am a doilie making machine and BBo is so cutie wutie, I just want to squeeze his little cheeks and feed him lots and lots of fattening latkes to fatten his little skinny self up.
Finally, hi Sally!
You are not allowed to talk about latkes until you find that elusive Eastern European relative in your family tree. Then again I think Bryan is Polish, so good show old man!
Post a Comment