February 23
by Janine Stephenson
The Pentagon released the figures for last week. Four hundred U.S. soldiers dead.
I just finished eating dinner. We had fish fillets with ketchup and fries with orange pop. It's going to be a long weekend. Bus loads of people have already arrived. There's a sleeping committee and an eating committee and even an entertainment committee. Mrs. Stoutmiller heads the Concord orientation committee. I'm on the canvassing committee and Becca is on the Helping Craig in the Office and Make Out with Him Committee. It's funny that we're all on committees now. The Grease Pit met with us today and told us that because we were leaders, that we needed to act like leaders. Becca asked him if that meant that we had to act like assholes. We all thought it was funny, except Grease Pit. For a brief moment, I felt sorry for him. But he said, no, that means we don't act like assholes even when other people are acting like it.
He said that the most important thing to do was to pretend that we knew what we were doing. For example, he pointed at me and said, "Blondie. I know you're intimidated by the Ivy Leaguers." I had to admit, the Grease Pit had a point. I am intimidated by the students from Harvard and Yale and even Princeton.
They all look so smart. The worst ones are the Philosophy majors. They just want to sit around and talk all the time. I don't even understand half of what they say. How am I going to tell them what to do? Grease Pit said that I was right. Those people are smarter than me - and him. And even if they weren't smarter than us they certainly thought they were. So it would do no good to tell them what to do. Instead, we had to guide them. They're smart enough to know how to stuff an envelope. And maybe they'll even come up with a more efficient way to do it. The point is that they aren't better than us and we're not the boss of them. Instead, we need to guide them. Suggest instead of tell. Show them and then let them do their thing. And we should enjoy how we're part of a big community now, instead of just being a storefront in a New Hampshire town.
It was quite a rousing talk. And even though Grease Pit is still an idiot, he was very smart about what he said. It made a lot of sense. Now, if only he would stop telling me to get his coffee.
