Who are you?

By Carolyn Weinstein

In case you haven’t noticed, this school is made up of art freaks and nerds who didn’t have friends in high school.  With that in mind, Fearless and Loathing is proud to present you with a new weekly series: Why Oberlin is Awkward.

Welcome to the first installment of what is sure to become your favorite (or least favorite, depending on how you deal with reality) blog ever.  This first entry deals with a terrible incident that only happens during the winter months, which unfortunately lasts from late October to March in Ohio.  It’s awful, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s unavoidable: it’s not recognizing people because of their huge winter jackets.

I get it: you’re from California, and you don’t know how to deal with temperatures below 50 degrees.  Still, is it really necessary to break out your puffy coat in November?  The leaves have barely fallen off the trees, and already you’re shrouding yourself in yards of synthetic fabric.  You pull your hood up because you’re not allowed to graduate Kindergarten if you don’t know that most heat escapes through your head.  But oh god, there goes your face.  Hoods have this way of perfectly obscuring anyone’s visage, making them utterly unrecognizable to anyone else.  Whatever, you’re warm, so why do you care if you’re anonymous?

This is selfish!  I don’t care about your warmth.  I care about how goddamn awkward it is when you walk past me on the way to class and I effectively ignore you, because I don’t know to say hi to you until you’re a foot away from me, because I can’t tell who you are on account of your stupid hood.  At that point, you’re way too close and it would be even more awkward to acknowledge that I know you.  What am I supposed to say?  “I’m sorry, I guess I don’t care enough about you to be able to recognize you from a distance?”  Would that work?  Should I just stay silent?  Then I would really be ignoring you, which would be rude.  Which is worse, awkward or rude?  Goddamnit, Los Angeles, don’t do this to me!  Why can’t you just wear a pea coat like the rest of us?  Of course, this brings up the problem of everyone wearing the same jacket, but at least pea coats don’t devour your face.  I’m sure that there are friends of mine from San Diego who I haven’t seen since before Thanksgiving because they’ve been hiding beneath layers of LL Bean.  It’s really a terrible thing.  I don’t even know if they still go here.

What happens when the real winter comes and everyone wears jackets?  Wouldn’t you be unable to recognize anyone?  No, because most of the time, when you’re walking around in the winter, you keep your eyes down to keep the snow out, meaning that you can’t see anyone.  That point is irrelevant.  But really, at that point the only way to survive the overwhelming awkwardness is to familiarize yourself with the hats that your friends wear and identify them that way. Okay, so I didn’t really do that.  Whatever.  I lost a lot of friends this winter.

So what’s the solution?  What can be done about this problem that persists during half of the school year?  I don’t know; I’m just a photographer.  Or, do what I do: look down at the ground, avoid eye contact, and mumble to yourself “Oh God, that was so fucking awkward.”