Yikes.

So. I was at the library today, helping some good comrades with their prep for our upcoming Bartky exam. While doing this, a rather loud pair sat right behind me. I used my incredible hearing (which functions even better when you are speaking in full voice five feet from my ear) and ability to split focus, and I listened shamelessly to a conversation between the chick with a cool accent and the guy that appeared to be the epitome of stupid in Abercrombie.

The word that caught my ear was Pushkin. Not something college students are likely to talk about. For the few the few brief minutes that I listened it was rather painful. She turned out to be a Russian. She was asking him questions and trying to find if he knew anything about Russian culture or history.

He, working his very hardest to shame the American peoples, admitted to never having heard of, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Trotsky, and apparently he thought Lenin was a member of the Beatles. He was also under the impression that the evils perpetrated by the government of the USSR were myth, which impression she was quick to correct.

I was appalled. Thankfully our study group broke up shortly thereafter and I was released from further motivation to turn around and slap him.

He was at least my age. What on earth was he doing with his life to this point???

Comments

  1. MaggieMarch 26, 2010 at 12:30 AM

    You've got to be kidding me. What was he doing in a library, anyway?

    ReplyDelete
  2. PatrickMarch 26, 2010 at 2:59 PM

    The poor dear was probably lost.

    ReplyDelete
  3. BretMarch 28, 2010 at 1:32 PM

    I could only imagine that he wound up there in search for the local bar, sadly. Or maybe he was plastered, and assumed that he was IN the bar? A terrible case, either way.

    ReplyDelete

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