Zip-a-dee-doo-dah and Bowdoin’s High Anxiety Levels

 

Humor us as we make another delayed observation on Bowdoin and self-evident truths.  It turns out the term “Zip” has taken on a new interpretation in today’s world of instant gratifcation, no matter what your desires may be.  That’s the truth, it’s actual; just lookee here:

              

In a sense, zipcar is a modern day parallel to renting motel rooms by the hour.  And communicating with tweets of 140 characters or less.  Or hooking up on campus.

In hooking up, you start a relationship and end it in one party or less.  Sounds like fun, unless you think beyond your libido and the next 12 hours, which today’s brightest and best apparently see as passe.  You know, so yesterday, and so confining.  So restrictive…so, well, suggestive of commitment.  Who wants that?

So perhaps we should think of the student body at our nearby paragon of small, elite, highly selective, very expensive liberal arts college as zipguys, zipgirls, zipqueers, and any other fashionable term for hook-up partners.  And when we do, given the high level of stress and neuroses among the student body, we think it’s right to wonder whether such rampant serial hook-up promiscuity could result in relationship and itnterpersonal anxiety.  Not that there’s anything wrong with it….

Unless you consider that when you dehumanize yourself to the sum total of your erogenous zones, gay abandon, and willingness to chug-a-lug, smoke, and swallow whatever is offered to you, in copious amounts, you don’t really have much claim on victimhood or wanting to be respected for who you are, do you?  Either in the morning, or the night before.

Call us old-fashioned in such things,

But you know what?  As we recall our lifetime of experiences, in which we somehow escaped the need for regular visits to a therapist, we’ll accept that designation with great joy and satisfaction.

We’d just like to suggest the current Bowdoin student body reflect on how they’re going to view their scrapbook of random hook-ups 10, 20, 30 and even 50 years from now.  And how a cavalier view of the mysteries, pain, and pleasure of such things diminished or expanded their appreciation of all life has to offer.

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