Wednesday
in Cambridge was our final day of class. We all had been assigned to choose a
single event or aspect of our trip and to write about the event three separate
times, each to a different particular audience. I chose my dad, my sister, and
my Big Mama. Each had its own particular
flavor, which was good because that was also the point of the assignment. It
was funny to hear how strikingly different everyone’s assignments were and
everyone had wonderful things to say about what the writing had felt like and
what it made us think about regarding how we told the story to three different
people. Most were simple, “I’ll tell my
friends about the drinking and crazy things and leave those parts out of the
ones I write for my parents.” Even though this was the general feeling, it was
still hilarious to hear how the nightlife events were always skimmed over in
the parent-version pieces. We all broke for lunch, and Phil, Logan, Ryan, and I all decided to eat at McDonald’s. That was a second day in a row of McDonald’s
lunch for Phil and me, but our wallets were thankful for it. The U.K. is
expensive.
After
lunch we returned to class to discuss the Angelou and Theroux novels. I kept
everyone in class at least an extra twenty minutes while I gushed about the
Theroux book by myself. I wasn’t sorry about it either. I liked the book so I
was gonna talk about it. BOOM. Class ended and everyone split up to go to their
rooms. We were all going to see the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival put on “The
Merry Wives of Windsor” that evening, so dinner was an on your own kind of
thing. I decided that I wasn’t very hungry, and I ate nothing until it was time
for us all to gather for the show. As we all gathered, I went into the little
convenience store outside Magdalene and bought a big tube of Pringles. About
seven Pringles in, I knew I’d made a horrible mistake. I kept trying to find
someone to pawn the chips off. As long
as I had them, I kept eating them, and I complained loudly for the entire walk
to the park where the show was being put on for us. Everyone found seats in the chairs provided,
and a few of the girls set up a picnic blanket with wine, bread, cheese, and
other little snacks. They didn’t want my Pringles. I bet Pringles and wine
would be an awesome combination. At least a better combination than Pringles
and my mouth. That combination was bad. Really bad. Eventually I coerced Logan
into about two thirds of the tube, and I happily relaxed between Ryan and Phil
as the show started. It was absolutely hilarious, and as the sobriety of our
group decreased, the hilarity of the play increased. Quite an example of
inverse variation. It got to the point that we were laughing so hard that two
of the funniest actors broke in the middle of scene and started laughing
themselves. This sent our group into utter hysteria and just made the actors
laugh harder. When they finally composed themselves, I was in such a fit of
laughter that I was laughing silently: that intense but silent laugh that
happens when things get really funny sometimes. One of the actors saw me and
smiled, happily acknowledging my pleasure with the performance.
A
rainstorm rolled through during the show, but the actors never stopped, so we
put on our hoods and deployed our umbrellas, never stopping our loud laughter.
It was a fantastic and fun performance. After the show some of the more drunk
members of our group went to the Pick to continue drinking and having fun. I,
however, was sober, wet, cold, and had laughed out my last bits of energy. I went back to my room at Magdalene and
rested. It had been a long day and I wanted to be rested for my final day in
Cambridge.
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