The World Cup
is contagious. I’ve caught a bit of an infection hanging around with someone sick on soccer. I also work in a lab with two Germans, a married couple, Thomas and Heike, who exult in their country’s profession of friendship. And as I walked out of the Kennedy Center this evening, I met a grad student from Trinidad proud of her country’s tie. She was waving goodbye to Alex who works in the lab next to mine and is alternately affectionate and mean, argumentative and a good teacher. He wears his pesas pinned under his yamacha. Perhaps so they don’t sway in front of the microscope when he bends over the objective. Or perhaps his objective is to blend in. Not much trouble around here at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, affiliate of Yeshiva University. It’s less of a surprise to see a religious scientist around here, a Drummond character who could take up the Bible and Darwin’s Origin of Species, weigh one in each hand and then place them together side by side in the last scene of Inherit the Wind. Einstein, who believed in God and relativity, hangs in every building. At least one portrait or bust. Omnipresent. Big brother or the deity of the place, he watches from beneath crazy hair promising the security of science and the speed of light and the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.
So as we walk out under a framed Einstein, Michelle from Trinidad calls after Alex from Brooklyn, “Don’t pick up any old ladies on the way home,” which is exactly who I think his hat is meant to attract, and we head down to the Eastchester towers where she also lives, of course. After talking for five minutes she offers to loan us a microwave for the summer and I realize what a cult of a community this place is where everyone exists to do research or go to med school and everyone understands that but see each other in the same gym and smile in the elevators and are good neighbors. As we cross the courtyard, which is actually almost pretty with blue sky between the tall, reassuring structures of 1925, 1935 and 1945 Eastchester Avenue, I see Superman. Who is also an M.D./pH.D. across the hall on the 4th floor of the neuroscience building and my last summer crush. He is playing catch with a small boy. He says hi as I walk by and the boy calls, “Daddy.” Clark Kent has a kid. Should have known. He’s from Utah. Oh well. Pales in comparison to afternoon world cup heartbreak. But besides helpless hours when the USA was losing to a country that should have stayed in a Kundera novel, it’s been a decent day. Better than decent. From early gym morning to now, coming back from library after getting along well with Jeffrey, the name I’ve given my Kaplan MCAT review book. Jeffrey is fond of Samantha. Samantha is fond of Jeffrey. We didn’t start out on the right foot, the book got the name because I didn’t like it, but we had a good time tonight. Jeffrey and I are going to hang out all summer in my modest monk-like time in the Bronx spent between experiments (I get to slice rat brains tomorrow) and running in the gym and studying med students, studying to be a med student in the library and applying myself to things for the year after and waiting for weekends in Manhattan lying around in Central Park on a picnic blanket with dim sum and Bob Dylan and buckets of moonbeams in my hand. But Monday was not bad, for a weekday, the farthest from Friday. I cooked dinner. And it was good.
So as we walk out under a framed Einstein, Michelle from Trinidad calls after Alex from Brooklyn, “Don’t pick up any old ladies on the way home,” which is exactly who I think his hat is meant to attract, and we head down to the Eastchester towers where she also lives, of course. After talking for five minutes she offers to loan us a microwave for the summer and I realize what a cult of a community this place is where everyone exists to do research or go to med school and everyone understands that but see each other in the same gym and smile in the elevators and are good neighbors. As we cross the courtyard, which is actually almost pretty with blue sky between the tall, reassuring structures of 1925, 1935 and 1945 Eastchester Avenue, I see Superman. Who is also an M.D./pH.D. across the hall on the 4th floor of the neuroscience building and my last summer crush. He is playing catch with a small boy. He says hi as I walk by and the boy calls, “Daddy.” Clark Kent has a kid. Should have known. He’s from Utah. Oh well. Pales in comparison to afternoon world cup heartbreak. But besides helpless hours when the USA was losing to a country that should have stayed in a Kundera novel, it’s been a decent day. Better than decent. From early gym morning to now, coming back from library after getting along well with Jeffrey, the name I’ve given my Kaplan MCAT review book. Jeffrey is fond of Samantha. Samantha is fond of Jeffrey. We didn’t start out on the right foot, the book got the name because I didn’t like it, but we had a good time tonight. Jeffrey and I are going to hang out all summer in my modest monk-like time in the Bronx spent between experiments (I get to slice rat brains tomorrow) and running in the gym and studying med students, studying to be a med student in the library and applying myself to things for the year after and waiting for weekends in Manhattan lying around in Central Park on a picnic blanket with dim sum and Bob Dylan and buckets of moonbeams in my hand. But Monday was not bad, for a weekday, the farthest from Friday. I cooked dinner. And it was good.
