Monday, August 25, 2008
Running Trope stands over the slain buffalo, holding its still-beating heart aloft. Blood runs down his forearms as he jams the spurting, arterial clump into his mouth.
“I am a man now!” he screams through mouthfuls, as John Williams conducts the orchestra into a poignant swelling of brass and winds, lest the spiritual transformation go unnoticed by readers.
That, my friends, is a coming-of-age ritual. Swift and senseless violence followed by the devouring of raw organ meat.
But with the near-extinction of buffalo and the prevalence of cheap, personal cooking devices endorsed by George Foreman, our society found a new way to come of age.
And that way is college. College is a time of self-discovery, a time for finding oneself, albeit often in a ditch, caked with vomit consisting of foods you’ve never eaten. Immediately after is the self-discovery of one’s car, wallet and phone.
Anthropologists marvel at the role that nihilistic drunkenness plays in the moral instruction of America’s young adults. In one popular ritual, the initiate ingests a sacred intoxicant laced with a powerful, non-herbal stimulant, while letting out a cry of “Jager bombs!”
Although the successful completion of this Jager ritual often results in the answering of “yes” to such questionable inquiries as “Wanna go to a rest stop and scare sleeping truckers?” many still take part. Before you condemn these people with a major in liberal arts and a minor in possession, know it is they who ensure a supply of the office drones necessary for continuing the American bureaucracy.
There is no one way to come of age in college, but if you leave college with immediate employment prospects, you have failed. There is even a special term for people like that: engineers. The rest of us take our coming of age much too seriously to ever let it happen.
We return to Extended Metaphor from the beginning of the column, as he stands over the slain buffalo. Blood runs down his forearms as he shakes his pounding head and swears he will never drink Jager again. Then, he remembers the cryptic words of wisdom the elders told him: “Ramen is better than organ meat, and there’s always grad school.”
Reichert is an Oberlin graduate student in law.
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The evolution of coming-of-age rituals
Dear Mr. Reichert: I am currently working on a thesis in Cultural Anthropology. The theme being: "Cultural Diversities in Coming of Age Rituals. After an eight-page, boring litany of diverse coming of age rituals, I realized I had covered about every country known to man except the United States. I was stymied. One last time I typed in my search and viola! Your column appeared. The longer I read, the louder I laughed. I have no idea how my professor will view this conclusion to my paper. It doesn't really matter. Truth is, after all, truth! Dr Karen M Sutton
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