I am sitting in the e-commons1 between my international and corporate tax classes. I am halfway through the reading for my real estate seminar when this girl walks in and sits at my table.
She’s wearing a lime green Aéropostale jumpsuit with uggs, and is soaked (SOAKED!) in perfume. People around us look up. Some cough. I stifle a wretch.
My first impulse was to jump up and scream, “HARK! SHE’S TRYING TO KILL US ALL! MUSTARD GAS ATTACK! MUSTARD GAS ATTACK! BOO HAK-HAK-HAK!!” and then run out of the room with my arms flailing, …but that never goes well so I just sat there and tried to not vomit.
Later, as I walked to class, I realized that Rainbow Brite’s perfume was so strong that I now smelled like it. I was unamused.
Before I could get too hysterical about the involuntary perfuming, I ran into Sideshow Bob, the resident crazy-homeless person in the Westbank skyway. Bob sits around the skyway and heckles people or reads scripture. It is hard to focus on an involuntary perfuming when a toothless man is shouting the good-word in the hallway.
Sideshow Bob was still looming around the skyway’s convenience store when I returned later in the afternoon. But this time he found a chair and started chanting in Spanish. Si, si!
I think the key to school etiquette is not being distracting. I don’t want to be nasally assaulted by your cologne, harassed by your screaming of scripture, interrupted by your library phone calls, or bored by your in-class tangents. And this applies to the random homeless people, scantily clad undergrads, and yes, even law students.
1 The e-commons (essentials market commons) is a dimly lit cafeteria space in the westbank skyway. It is essentially a bunch of tables in a basement room where people study between classes.