My College Reunion Brings All the Boys to the Yard
A chronicle of a friendship, plus 10 reasons why my weekend was better than yours.
I have long been obsessed with the 2003 Kelis hit song, “Milkshake,” aka “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.” True to my literal, autistic form, I was not sure what the song meant until I asked a much older person—and even then, he was wrong, so I didn’t understand its meaning for a very long time.
In any case, I have long parodied its lyrics with, for example, the English major version: “My milkshake dost bring forth all ye socially constructed masculine entities to the yard. And they make meaning by iterating that it’s superior to yours. Emphatically, it’s superior to yours. I could instruct you, but that would involve charging cash and colonizing your economy.” Bravo?
Well, at least some of my friends think it’s hilarious. My best friend, Adam, is chief among those who get my humor because, among other reasons, he was one of the first people I ever met who recognized I had a sense of humor at all. And that was when I was eighteen, when we met our first year of college.
Before then, I really struggled with belabored attempts at being funny. I remember trying improv at an arts camp at fourteen and not being able to come up with any kind of humor that resonated with anyone, including myself.
It wasn’t just there that I struggled to have a legible sense of humor. My earliest memories of being laughed with—as opposed to laughed at—were as a young adult at college.
***