It begins like this: I walk into a bar, or, better yet, I am walking down the main pedestrian walkway on Tulane’s campus, McAlister Drive. As I am walking, amidst a crowd of people, I see several people who I either know, know their name, have met before, or otherwise were, at one point or another, acquainted with. Some of these people I knew during Freshman year. Others I knew from various groups or clubs that I was engaged in, but am no longer. Some of these people do not remember me, or, their association of me, I find it fair to believe, is probably so faint and tangential that I can excuse their unacknowledged passing. Of others, though, I am less forgiving. They know my name; in some cases we may have even spent large amounts of time together in the past; and I know their name. And, yet, as we pass each other on this teeming boulevard, eyes meeting, if only for a second, there is but a glimmer of recognition on both our parts and nothing that could constitute any sort of mutual acknowledgement.
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This, I am dismayed to admit, has become the paradigm for my social interactions at Tulane. It is a callous structure, leaving little room for re-acquaintance, rendering my life a dizzying parade of regret and painful reminders—”spurned”, I used to say.
I have been spurned!
