Encounter of the annoying kind
I’m at the library trying to figure out what conditional variance is; the problem set due Tuesday involves it, but we didn’t discuss it in class. On the way here, I had an amusing run-in: while I was walking alongside one of the streets that borders the campus, a car pulled up alongside me, and a Hispanic woman about my age leaned out of the passenger side and started asking me questions. I presumed the guy driving the car was her boyfriend; it seemed like they were having a night on the town. My first thought was that she needed directions to somewhere on campus, and seeing that I had a book-bag in hand, she figured I was a student here. Fair enough. But her first question was, “Are you a student here?”, sort of incredulously. Hmm… would I be walking around the campus at 9 on a Sunday night otherwise? Must be because I’m black; that doesn’t offend me, because I’ve noted the dearth of black people here myself: there are certainly under 100 black students, probably less than 50. Then she questioned me about the tution, which I answered as best I could. Then she asked me if they’re any girls on campus, how many, are they sexy, you look nice, do you think I’m sexy? I felt like laughing and grimacing at the same time, because I’ve been in this kind of situation before– being poked to see what reaction will ensue–, and I had seen it coming, from the moment and speculative way in which she asked me if I’m a student here. The fact that she felt free to ‘flirt’ with me while her guy was sitting right next to her just pointed to how this amounted to a form of entertainment. I just told her it’d been nice talking to her and walked away. Sometimes I have time to deal with people like that, sometimes I don’t.
Back to probability.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:36 am
We feel your pain.