Page 160 - WhyAsInY
P. 160
Why (as in yaverbaum)
Thus, you can readily see that S.P., overcrowding, and a bunch of Soviet scientists (who, I hate to say it, were probably German anyway) were ultimately responsible for my college education and anything that followed from it. (Oddly enough, many years later I discovered that a distant Yaverbaum cousin was a physicist in the Kazakh S.S.R., where Sputnik 1 had been launched.)
Okay, you might have some cavils concerning notions of causality relied upon above, but, after you finish reading David Hume, please tell me how one idea of causality is better or, to be more precise, more prov- able than another. Anyway, at least I didn’t attribute my trajectory after Hudde to divine intervention (as my mother might have, although not exactly in those words). Let’s just admit, as I do, that I was damned lucky at Midwood or, to use a somewhat loftier phrasing, very fortunate.
Forever and a Day, Day, Day, Day
Midwood was, as you have undoubtedly surmised, a very important stopping place for me. And it was a place that was important for reasons and occurrences other than those that arguably led me to Amherst. I will end this chapter with ruminations concerning the impact on me and on my peers of the idea that one was presumed to be college-bound.
First, however, I will ask your indulgence again and itemize the more important events that I recall from high school, without trying to impose a narrative on them, especially because even I refuse to discuss them as if they were somehow causally related. As was the case with my discussion of P.S. 193, I shall editorialize and expatiate where I deem it appropriate. (Having to contend with the pressure to learn vocabulary words for the purpose of doing well on the Scholastic Apti- tude Test, I might have known the meaning of expatiate by the time I entered my junior year at Midwood; on the other hand, since I never did get very far in the alphabetically arranged lists that were available for guidance, it was more likely hit or miss for any word occurring after abase and abash.)
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