Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Jim and I, both with Appalachian roots, went off to college and found ourselves among the “Intelligentsia.” We were the intellectuals, the deep thinkers, the chess players and poets. So with all our deep thinking and so forth we didn’t consider our genes. It doesn’t matter how intellectual you think you are, eventually your genetics will catch up with you.

This happened to us after Jim got his master’s degree and we moved to Oklahoma, rather gradually. First, we bought a pick-up truck—because with all our moving we really needed it. Then my child hood interest in fishing returned. No problem, lots of intelligent women like to fish, right? Then my dad gave us a .22 pistol, and a shot gun—lots of wild critters in Oklahoma, you never know when you might need it. However it was the night Jim and I were driving around in our night clothes, in our pick-up truck spotlighting and shooting skunks that I realized our genetics had finally caught up with us. I knew then that our intellectual days were over.

Over the next decade I became at peace with who I am. What ever intellectual leanings I had were tempered by the knowledge that I am essentially at heart: an Appalachian-American and proud of it. I have been able to strike a balance. I can play chess, write poem and have deep conversations and still grow a vegetable garden, skin a deer, and go fishing.

But in spite being adaptable in many ways I am very 'out of place' here in Cambridge. It doesn't bother me though because it really is a privilege to be here and I find it so amusing. Thursday night we had dinner at St. Edmunds Formal Hall. To make a long story short, all the students at Cambridge University have to belong to an individual 'college' Jim's 'college' is St. Edmund's. Anyway, here at this end of term formal dinner, all of the students were wearing their "Gown's" (they kind of look like creepy wizard robes) and all of the guests were wearing formal dresses, (present company included), it was very fancy. When we walked into the dining hall and the steward couldn’t find our name on the seating list. I took a look at the seating chart and realized they had placed us at the head table right beside the Master and His wife ('The Master' is like the president of St. Edmund's). The reason we couldn't find our names was that no one would have dreamed of us being put there! What a hoot! It was quite the honor, but totally wasted on us! You just know there was some snooty student out there saying 'why am I here at this crummy table, I should be sitting beside the Master.' And there we were not really sure which fork to use when. The whole dinner was chalked full of ceremony with gongs ringing, there were half dozen pieces of silverware at each place setting, and four glasses, three of them for wine (Jim and I just used the water glass...). By mimicking the natives we managed to represent our primitive race well. We were charming and proper, but the joke really is on them, they had a couple of hillbillies at the head table, shhhh, don't tell them, just enjoy the moment!