Springtime on campus = ew.

Today the temperatures have crept past seventy for the first time this year, which seems like good news. However, I work on a college campus, which means that this is actually bad news. Ordinary college students who just last week slumped around campus in their hoodies, boots, and pajama pants have now removed ALL of those items and replaced them with much smaller pieces of fabric that, if you look closely, can be identified as miniskirts, tank tops, and shorts. I'm referring to the girls, of course; the guys are just as bad, though: many of them are wearing beaters or have removed their shirts entirely. And, the combination of exposed female skin and warm temps have transformed them into loud, smirking assholes. (Many of them were assholes before but kept this under wraps, just like the girls kept their skin.)

I try very hard to believe that humans are, in fact, much more sophisticated than animals, but often I find my efforts challenged, particularly when the mating rituals described above are boldly displayed before my resistant eyes.

Sadly, these primal cycles affect me too. Today I wore a skirt with bare legs and open-toed shoes, and I noticed that some of my male students behaved...differently. Some were louder, more show-offy. Others were more gentlemanly, deferential. Still others tried extra hard to participate to my liking. Basically, whatever they thought they could do best, whatever has won them most attention in the past, that's what they did, probably subconsciously.

But who am I to say? I'll never REALLY understand men. Even though I used to hate it when women said that, now that I'm married, I know it's true. I know Mike VERY well as a person, but as a man, he remains mysterious to me. This is why I once swore I would never marry: at the time, my idea of being in love was conquering the other person, and you can never truly conquer what you don't understand. (Ironically, when you DO come to understand that thing you don't want to conquer it anymore.) But now I'm down with ambiguity. What else do we have to keep for ourselves other than our own mystery? I know I want to keep (horde maybe is a better word) just a little bit of mine.

But anyway, back to complaining about college mating rituals. The bottom line is, if such a sordid, archaic thing must happen, I wish they would at least keep it out of my sight. Maybe I'll start failing girls for showing too much leg and guys for noticing. But who am I to question or disrupt nature? Maybe I should just accept the inevitable.