It was a damp, fall evening when Ethan Wicks and Eva Jaimeson ’25 meandered off the Zilkha Center porch, backpacks slung casually over their shoulders.
“Done with work for the week and not even 9pm,” said Wicks over the sound of his hunter-green carabiner clinking against his extremely insulated water bottle.
“Hey, isn’t there pub night in Dodd right now?” asked Jaimeson with a perfectly unaffected nonchalance.
“Oh yeah, let’s head over. I got nothing to do.”
A Haybale reporter spied these two and their cool strut as they entered Dodd, flashing their IDs like they’d done it a million times before. She decided to abandon her post on Dodd porch and see if these cool cats were really as chill as the condensation on their OAE water bottles. She watched as they both pointed to the tall, plaid can of local cider. Cool choice.
Wicks and Jaimeson sat down and casually started playing cards. No conflict, no raising voices. They kept up their casual conversation about the upcoming swim team party and their positionality as divers, slight outsiders yet beloved by the group.
Our reporter watched them drink two more cups of local cider at a responsible yet impressive pace. They appeared remarkably composed compared to the reporter’s experience last week with two cans of the same cider. It was time to descend.
“Hey, linear algebra! How are you, man!” Wicks exclaimed as the reporter approached. They shared some tasteful jokes about their shared math experiences.
“Want us to deal you in? You know the rules, right?” said Jaimeson. The reporter, in fact, did not know the rules. Or the game. Or why one of the cards had a lady with two heads on it. The hearts looked cute, though.
Jaimeson dealt in our reporter, proudly spilling the rest of her cider all over the deck of cards. “Oh, fuck, sorry, let me get you a fucking– a fucking– how you say– napkin!”
“Oh, that’s okay, I didn’t need those anyway!” Our reporter replied, revealing her humiliating lack of card knowledge.
Once Jaimeson had thrown a stack of roughly fifty Domino’s napkins on the spill, the game resumed.
“Jazz rehearsal was canceled today, so we had some extra time to stop by,” Jaimeson began in answer to no question. “We’re 22, so we’re like, so used to some casual drinking,” she continued, in contrast to the rising flush on her face and her sloppy patting of the reporter’s shoulder.
Our reporter overheard Wicks shouting into his phone. “Hey man, get down here! It’s a linear algebra reunion!”
Our reporter began to ask Wicks about the elusive Jazz @ Williams when she was brashly interrupted by him asserting that he “had to piss, like, right fucking now.” She tried to redirect to Jaimeson, but when our reporter saw her staring intently at a half-folded Domino’s napkin mumbling “how did I forget how to make a fuckin’ cootie catcher,” she realized it was time to let these two enjoy the rest of their night.
Our reporter found it reassuring that even these two cool kids couldn’t make it past tag #3 unscathed.
Comments