One of my sisters, a captain on the high school rowing team for which I'm a geriatric alum, got busted last week for hazing her young teammates.
It was all in good fun, she says, while the girls on her boat were at an away regatta. Becca and a few other seniors grabbed a container of the gelatinous chocolate spread Nutella, a few plastic utensils and their 18-year-old senses of humor. They then employed that triumvirate of creative forces to create a faux-feces spectacle in the younger teammates' hotel bathroom. "Freshmen eat poop!" they wrote on the mirrors.
The hotel's maid, hours later happening upon what must have looked like an epic diarrhoeal explosion, was appalled. She called management, who in turn called the biohazard folks, who then cordoned off Becca's section of the hotel to chemically sterilize it. Bec was busted.
My mother relayed this tale to me over the phone the other day. She was laughing. My sister is a known prankster. Par example, when the city sheriff was up for election last year-he is the father of another teammate of Bec's and mine-Becca called his house on election day, deepened her voice about two octaves and informed Mr. Lawhorne that he'd lost the local race.
Click for previous columns: Sense and Safety Owning Up
After he betrayed his disappointment, Becca betrayed her identity. Badabing. But while I usually find my sister's antics amusing, I'll admit her latest stunt left me disappointed. Like so many of us in the 18-to-24 bracket, I'm an intern this summer working as a reporter-which puts me on par with Becca's hapless frosh initiates. Like a lot of Duke students, I'm also abroad. Being simultaneously an intern and foreigner, while exhilarating in many senses, means I'm constantly a-gog and bewildered.
Yesterday I was supposed to go to a hearing at London's High Court. It seems that Adidas is suing Wimbledon and other international tennis groups over putting logos on apparel worn in the famed grass-court tourney. Wimbledon says stripes down the sleeves count as a logo, and must be stricken from any and all Adidas apparel worn in Wimbledon games-to remind, greats like Andre Agassi and Martina Hingis are sponsored by the German sports manufacturer. Adidas says its logo is not the three stripes, but rather the three-stripe-pyramid with their name stamped underneath. To ban the three-stripes-down-the-sleeve logo is discriminatory. The two met in court; hilarity ensued.
If by hilarity you mean my absolute inability to comprehend ANYTHING that was said. It started with me inadvertently not adhering to British courtroom etiquette. Strike One: Sarah enters the courtroom, late. Strike Two: Sarah realizes she has not bowed to His Lordship, the presiding judge-a formality that is executed by all others who enter and exit the courtroom after her. Strike Three: Sarah is not wearing a black blazer like her peers in Court 16, and is instead wearing a white cotton t-shirt. Strike Three Again: Sarah's feet were housed not in proper shoes, but in flip-flop-like sandals.
Had he seen them, His Lordship would not have been pleased.
I sat there, sinning four-fold, trying to understand the proceedings. And I present to you the only quote in full I was able to capture from my visit:
"I would ask Your Lordship not to diminish the importance of paragraph 55a, subparagraph 4."
That's all. The rest sounded like mumbly-jumbly BBC News voiceover, on a very low volume setting, as transmitted through a radio under a pile of three-ply Egyptian cotton towels. When I could hear, I couldn't decipher a word of the jargon. I didn't even know I was in the right place until, after about 30 minutes of referencing paragraphs and subparagraphs of 1999's Richardson-and-Somebody case, someone said "tennis."
I will never be Linda Greenhouse, I thought to myself (and still think).
I left the court not even able to ascertain what date they set the impending trial for-that's how bad it was. Slowly I shuffled back to my office to file the story, afraid to arrive. I started to sniffle, then cry.
What was I going to do when, in 10 minutes when I was back at my desk, I'd have to write 500 words about this case for the 8,500 international subscribers to the news wire service I work for? And how could I, trusted to do the job, come out and essentially declare my incompetence to my boss?
I came in, sat down, and started to Google various legalese terms I'd managed to pick up. I trudged over to the copy chief and asked him if he wanted me to add more to the wire brief about the story, already up for subscribers. "Oh," he said, looking up distractedly from watching an MP belittle Tony Blair. "Sports picked the story up. You can chat with them about it, or do something else."
Sometimes, you luck out. I ended up writing about Brad and Angelina's baby yesterday instead (okay, so maybe all my work isn't going to be consequential this summer).
I was thankful I didn't get yelled at and more thankful I didn't have to convey my ignorance. I'm thankful that even if I did, I have very astute and basically forgiving bosses whose harshest threat is to "dock my pay" (read: I'm unpaid). Really, I'm so grateful. I think about my internship experiences, this summer and last, when I think about the freshmen on the rowing team with Becca-one of whom is my youngest sister Mary. I think about them, 14 and 15 years old.
I think about them competing in a national championship for rowing when they're barely out of puberty, probably freaked out as I remember being, but still wanting to impress the older girls. And then I think about my prank-pulling sister and her friends, putting them down.
When you're low in the pecking order, you don't deserve to complain. But you don't deserve to be kicked.
Sarah Ball is a Trinity junior and features editor of The Chronicle. Her column runs weekly during the summer.
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