The Legend of "Ass and Cats" and Friends

When I decided to go to a private liberal arts college, it seemed as if it was going to be a haven for smart, intellectuals who liked to sip coffee and talking about the political happenings in Egypt, and while that was the case to some extent, it really was more of a haven for weird people. And I don't say that as a condescending proclamation. It takes a truly weird person to be able to identify other weird people, but I like to believe that my freak flag is one that is a little more appropriate to fly in public. On the up and up, successful people at Maryville College were commonly people who were too busy in academia to be successful in high school. We were not particularly well bred for social interaction, and in the safe bubble of campus, we didn't have a lot of help with that. And because of our core classes, we were given the opportunity to dabble in subjects across the board, exposing us to the different kinds of weird that dominated each major. I settled in the English department, my favorite collection of freaks: we spent our times wrapped up in words, too busy to acknowledge that we only spoke to each other in metaphors and anecdotes, and too pompous to even consider that there could be another major better than us.
But the best thing about being in the English department is that I could always rely on someone being a little more weird than me. For the longest time, I always depended on the guy who consistently wore cargo shorts to class and would relate every piece of feminist literature to being raised by his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt. It was like waiting on the whitest version of The Secret Life of Bees every single class. I didn't come into college as an English major, but rather stumbled on to it by accident. I was originally going to be pre-med, but after a lack of witty Grey's-like banter and a lot of really intense peers, I decided that I didn't want to do that after all. Discovering that I enjoyed the witty banter more, I doubled up with Communications and English, instead. I spent my days listening to how my peers were scorned by the over-feminization of their childhoods and countless tales about how the despair of being fifteen led them to be an English major. I always just kind of liked words, so I was left out of all the perils and angst that most English kids took to get there.
Our senior year, we had to take comprehensive exams, a test that can cover any material in any class, which is a literature major's worst nightmare considering that very few of us actually read most of the material that we covered in class. We were all focused the week before, when we were asking one of our professors how many people have failed the test, a feat that could land you in an unwelcomed fifth year of college. None of us had been sleeping, so we were all on edge. As our professor was answering our question, one girl screamed out from the back of the room and started crying. She ran out of the room and disappeared into the hallway; between her screams and my lack of sleep, I almost passed out, and I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.
She came back into the room and announced that she had seen a wasp, when I turned my head around Exorcist style and barked back, What the hell is your problem? Sit your ass down. My professor told me to calm down, but in all fairness, I wasn't the one that exploded in fear over a wasp. I've never dealt well with people who have such strong reactions to such small events--kind of like the girls who would scream when someone would turn the lights off in elementary school. Why? What are we achieving? Nothing, but so is the problems with a class full of strung-out, sleepless weirdos.
But no one tops the young man I shared my World Cultures: Islam class with. We affectionately came to know him as "Ass and Cats," after a couple of close calls my friend had with him in class. I was never an expert at getting to class early, nor really good at getting to class on time. As I was casually strolling out of my dorm at 9:27 to get to my 9:30, I got a text that said Get to class now. Ass and cats is trying to sit next to me. I need you to get here, stat. When I got to class, I asked her who Ass and Cats was, and she pointed to him. I asked her why his name was Ass and Cats and she very stated, Because he smells like ass. And cats. Ass and cats. We kept Ass and Cats our secret, as if we had just discovered that Bruce Wayne was Batman. We protected each other from the prospect of Ass and Cats who was generally known for going full blown Chopin on his keyboard in the middle of class.
One day, he was going exceptionally hard in the keyboard paint when he announced in the middle of one of our professor's lectures Shut up. I was hoping that maybe I was the only one who had heard it, but the entire class turned around to catch a glance at the young man. Our professor didn't miss a beat. A couple minutes later, the typing grew increasingly louder when he yelled out, SHUT UP. Our professor stopped in the middle of the lecture and finally addressed him, Excuse me? He casually said, Oh, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to my computer. Ass and Cats must have felt my sympathetic vibes because we've all been in that place where we've awkwardly been mistaken for yelling at our professor before... okay, maybe not the exact situation, but I know what it's like to feel awkward, so I felt bad.
After class, I noticed that he tailed me very closely as I walked out the door. He only stayed a couple steps behind me, and though I didn't keep tabs, I could feel his presence behind me. Knowing that I was being followed, I took a couple of wrong turns to obscure parts of campus to see if I could lose him. No luck. Eventually, I went into the campus chapel and turned around to see him standing face to face with me. He looked at me and announced, Why are you following me? And just like that, in his own world, I had become the awkward one. In some very topsy-turvy parallel world, the tables had turned, and I was the weird liberal arts kid that I had so desperately tried to avoid. And then it hit me... maybe I was the awkward one.
The only way that anyone is awkward is through the perspective of another person, and though I wasn't raised in a non-prostituting brothel nor had a panic attack over an insect nor yelled at my professor, that didn't fully rule me out of being the awkward liberal arts kid. For all I know, I could be the Ass and Cats of my DC life, going around smelling like an obscure combination of feces and felines. So I try to consider what the repercussions of judging others is, and what it's like to potentially being the off one of the group. None of us are exempt, even the public school graduates. The world is unforgiving, and we're all only one nickname away from being an awkward urban legend of yesteryear.