Me and the F-word
By MIKE MARCHAND
I've been a student at Notre Dame for three weeks now, and somehow I get the sense that I don't fit in. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but everywhere I go, I hear the F-word. It's a word that doesn't offend me unless I'm its intended victim. Most of the time, I hear the F-word in very hushed tones, like the people who use it don't want me to know that they're saying it, but I hear them anyway. Some brazen people come straight out and hurl the F-word at me. Of course, the word I'm talking about is F-R-E-S-H-M-A-N.
The extremely weird thing is, I'm a junior. I don't even look like a freshman. I mean, admit it, freshmen, some of you (and you know who you are) are practically draped in the word freshman. The aura of freshman-ness radiates from you. Some freshmen wear their frosh drapery like a badge of honor. How many of you have seen freshmen, standing motionlessly in a shirt that says something like "Ridgeville High Class of '99" holding a campus map, wondering why the Stepan Center and Stepan Chemistry Hall are on different ends of campus? And you mumble the F-word, and deservedly so, at those freshmen who blatantly exude their freshman-ness.
But I don't. OK, this IS my first year at Notre Dame, even though I spent two years at Holy Cross (that smallish campus between Saint Joseph's High School and Saint Mary's). And I DID need to look for O'Shaughnessy Hall for about 25 minutes because I was too stubborn to bring a campus map to orientation — that would be TRANSFER orientation, to those of you with the F-word on the tip of your tongue. But only the handful of students whom I sheepishly asked about the location of O'Shag knows about that. Everyone else who casually tosses the F-word in my direction has never met or seen me before, but immediately see the F-word carved into my forehead.
What did I do to deserve this stereotype? For the life of me, I cannot figure it out. It's probably because I constantly have the standard, goofy, freshman-like, first-month-at-Notre-Dame-and-just-can't-believe-it grin on my face. Or it's because I live off-campus and commute, thereby reducing the time I'm actually at Notre Dame by about 18 hours a day.
But it could be something else. Maybe it's because I'm actually polite in line at South Dining Hall, and I don't complain about the food. It might be because I don't actually believe that Zahm's gay, olé, olé-olé-olé. Maybe it's because I don't know why you can't go to the 14th floor in the library. Or that I just noticed a few days ago that the aforementioned O'Shaughnessy Hall has a clock on it or that there's no longer an arcade in the basement of LaFortune. Or that it took me a little while to figure out that "ID number" meant "social security number," not "driver's license number" and that that ID is not the same as the AFS ID you need to access a computer.
Am I considered an F-word because I don't own every year's edition of The Shirt or I didn't wear this year's to the Kansas game? I can't help that; they don't come in my size. Speaking of the game, I didn't throw anything or try to do the wave in the second quarter, and I actually watched it ... sober. Or that I didn't know that I actually had to pay for football tickets? I thought they were included in tuition or could be charged to my student account. The ticket lady actually thought I was a grad student before I told her that I thought I didn't have to pay for my tickets out-of-pocket. Then she asked, "Let me guess, you're a freshman?"
Maybe it's because of my fashion, or lack thereof. After all, I don't wear sandals. I don't own anything by Tommy Hilfigger-Hillfinger-hell, I can't even spell it. Or Abercrombie & Fitch. And I can't stand that stupid "I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch" song that everyone around here seems to love so much. I have nothing against girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch, those of you A&F ladies, just the song. I don't know what does the little x means in an on-campus phone number. I thought they all start with one or four. (Ladies, I'll let you write yours down and then explain it to me.)
I guess what I'm trying to say here is don't use the F-word to stereotype people who don't exactly fit the ND mold, especially ME. And if you see one of those blatant freshmen with their high school shirt and campus map, help them out, wait until they're out of earshot, then say, "Stupid freshmen."
Mike Marchand is an off-campus junior English major whose mother is terrified that he won't get a decent job after graduation.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, September 13, 1999
