Good Morning, Vanna
I live in Bushnell, on the south side of campus. It's one of the two ski lodges they're about to bulldoze to make way for “apartment style housing.” If you're wondering, it is absolutely charmed to live in a building the college has already decided is functionally useless and has no value. We did a great job with the wall decor, though, which helps.
My window faces the Old K lot. It's a little too much people-watching for me, but no one can really see into my window in the daytime, so I try not to work myself up about it. You can’t see the picnic benches in the periphery, which I count as a blessing.
I like to call the triangle between Old K, Manning, and Bushnell the Panopticon, which refers to Jeremy Bentham's prison model in which the prisoners never know if they're being observed. In the Panopticon model, there is one prison guard at the center of a hollow cylindrical prism that is full of cells that look out onto a single tower in the middle. This is the prison guard's space, for his me time, of course. In the Panopticon, no one ever knows who is being watched, and therefore their behavior is supposed to reflect the behavior of someone who knows they're constantly being held accountable for their actions. Paranoia weaves a web of anxieties, which upholds this new prisoner accountability.
The catch, however, is that the prison guard is the most observed person of them all. You'd hope in your heart of hearts that the prison guard is the one who develops a paranoia-fueled accountability. You have hope for that kind of thing. At least I do.
Now, I implore you to imagine all the useless, brain-wasting, and incredibly fun gossip you could learn if you were perched on the spire on the center of the Old K roof. No limits to it, really.
I don't mean to compare it to prison, just to say that that triangle has a unique effect of being so incredibly public and so incredibly private at the same time. I'm not even sure what the acoustics at the picnic tables are in comparison to the Old K patio, but I'm not about math. I'm just about people-watching — not even of my own volition, simply because of the position of my window. I see people I know exceptionally well, a little bit, and not at all. I see strangers all the time and just assume they live in the Tafts. At least 900 of you people live in the Tafts, in my mind. I'd kill to share a bathroom with only three people. Count your blessings, is what I say.
Anyway, from my window, you are all little Wheel of Fortune clues bouncing around with your tiny little backpacks.
It’s starting to feel less like people-watching and more like piecing together a clue. For example, my next-door neighbor and friend, Olivia, has a bright green L.L. Bean backpack because normcore is god-core, so I can see her bouncing in and out of Bushnell without my glasses on. Because my object permanence is remarkable and not unlike babies and dogs, it is easy to trick me with bright colors.
Vanna White is the long-time beloved magician's sidekick on America's accidental Jeopardy post-game quiz show, Wheel of Fortune. And so talking to myself, not unlike an idiot, I abuse third-person reference in my first waking hour, and sort of play-act as Vanna, as well as someone doting on Vanna (my range is INSANE), arm gestures et al.
Good morning, Vanna. How are you today? That's the tackiest dress I've ever seen, and I can't believe you can't get over your decades-long phase of wearing the kind of thing you could only get at a strip mall within the six hours before a White House press dinner. You amaze me, Ms. White. You really do.
These are the songs I listen to as I try to figure out if I am Vanna, or if Vanna is a ghost, or if (to be met with shock and disbelief) just a blonde white lady on TV, delicately slack-lining the divide between being sixty and looking forty. Imagine her, a shell of a 70s love-ballad of a woman, being explained for the first time the post-emoji analog emoji trend. It excites you. You love it.
What I have decided is that Vanna listens to Eagles of Death Metal in the morning.
If you have something you would like Vanna to hear, shoot me an email. I'll make sure it's passed along to the boss. Lastly, if you are lucky enough to see her, here are some ideas of things to say to her: Good morning Vanna. So lovely to see you up so early today. Would you like a glass of Orange juice? Everything you do is beautiful. I'll be right back with that juice.
— Isla Hamblett