2901 Spring 2023

The Original Drew Student Publication

Literary Edition

Two-Tired Nhu Huynh

Two people should not fit on a one-person rental bike. The ones you find on every other San Francisco street, neon-pink trim wheels and worn handles, tucked into neat lines in front of schools and apartment buildings. You would think that the skinny bike with its skinny limbs could not withstand the weight of two curious sixteen year olds on a Tuesday afternoon, but you would be wrong. It was not out of place, especially for San Francisco; I bet two people rode on one-person bikes all the time. The stares we received said otherwise, but it was about time I stopped caring about what other people thought of me.

As we stopped at a red light on our way to Japantown, searching for a faster way to get there, a row of these neon-pink trim wheels and worn handles, without a single one missing, glared at us. “That’s it. We’re biking.” I had to pick the perfect one. Not too used, but not a brand new one because what if it was defected and no one knew because no one had tested it yet? So I chose one in the middle for the both of us: who needed 2 bikes? I could feel my lunch bubbling up in my stomach, like it knew it was in for a ride, literally. It was the afternoon sun and adrenaline that pulled the corners of my lips ear to ear.

“Where should I sit? The basket?” The basket barely fit my venti matcha latte, and had a weight limit of twenty pounds, which I unfortunately surpassed.

“Here, sit on the seat, and I’ll stand and pedal.” So what if I fell on the street with nothing to hold onto but my friend’s waist and nowhere to put my feet? He pushed off, and we both lurched forward, slipping off the skinny bike little by little as our laughter made the handles quiver from side to side; it was probably scared for us. But I wasn’t scared. I wished I could be on that bike forever, even if my back became sore from balancing myself and the soles of my shoe began grazing the cement. When we began going downhill I wished I could’ve let go, and perhaps I could’ve lived in the spontaneity of that moment forever.

Golf: A Game for Life; an Op-Ed

While it may be a smaller sport at Drew, golf is the ideal sport for team members, much more than the fastpaced “real” sports where one peaks in their mid-twenties. The longevity, emphasis on precision, and life opportunities benefit anyone who plays the sport throughout their entire life.

Starting with the sport itself, golf differs from many other games using a ball. Uniquely, golf requires self-accountability, and the need to be precise. Starting with the former, a player of other sports like soccer or basketball relies on one’s team greatly. This can be in passing the ball or giving a teammate a defensive role, and no one person is responsible for the outcome of the game. While this does teach team-building activities, the level of responsibility is much greater in golf, which helps in many aspects of life. While this could be intimidating, the non-confrontational nature and emphasis on etiquette in golf will keep even the weakest of players comfortable on the course.

While in sports with positions, it is easy to hone in on one skill, in golf one has to be a jack of all trades, which applies to life as a whole. A player has to be solid at hitting their putter to get the ball into the hole, consistent with irons to get from the fairway to the green, and strong with drivers to get to that point. This variety can also make the sport much more entertaining with tediousness being minimized. Unfortunately, in sports with positions, one can get into a rut of getting better at one piece, and being well-rounded is less encouraged.

One huge factor that teenagers often overlook when choosing a sport is longevity, which is, unfortunately, lacking in most sports. One cannot keep up running and jumping and throwing as they did in high school when they are in their 30s or 40s, which is seen in almost all sports. Golf is not a strenuous sport, with the hardest physical feat being walking up hills, which one can evade by using a golf cart. Due to this, golf players can play well into retirement and eventual deterioration does not reduce one’s skill anywhere near to the extent that it is in other sports.

Speaking of looking at the future, one classic benefit of golf is business. With a sport that is relatively popular when taking into account the US population, it is not uncommon for people to talk business on the course. With the relaxing pace of golf, there’s a balance of intense moments and chatting that meetings are seamless. Even if you don’t think you will go into a position where you talk big deals, you can make lifelong friends at courses, and expect to only pay a portion of the time you go out to play.

In conclusion, golf can be a relaxing, long-term sport that gets you connections, valuable skills, and sets you up for success in many aspects of your life. After seeing all of these factors that make golf a wonderful sport, I implore you to consider joining the golf team next spring. [M.

Bregler]

Leo Blum

Stammtische

Lailey Elliot

There’s a German word I can’t remember at the moment that, I guess, the way my mom uses it, might translate to “haunt.” Haunt as a noun, that is. It’s what you call it when your average Oma or Opa takes up residence in a public place and starts the long, shaky journey towards becoming scenery. Be that at a porch, a park, a stoop, or at a café, paying rent in espresso and hard little pastries. Staring into the middle distance. Doing tai chi. Now, see, I used to think this was the worst possible way to spend time. A way for people who’d be dead soon to practice. But I was young, then, and naive, and twelve; but now that I’m old enough to have a bum knee (seventeen), I can see the wisdom of the haunt.

Once, at Schubert’s bakery on Clement, I saw an Oma, the kind they don’t usually make west of the Rhine, order no fewer than two pieces of the very same opera cake and a chocolate éclair. She sat down at the little chair near the window. And, I, for reasons unknown, watched her, enraptured. I watched her the same way you might watch a zoo animal: what’s your secret, I thought? What’s the end game here? Is someone going to join you? No one ever did, and over the next half hour or so she systematically demolished the first opera cake, and then half of the éclair. She saved the second opera cake for later. Sometimes she read a newspaper, all of it folded out, big and unwieldy, and sometimes she looked at what I suspect to be the web version of Der Spiegel International on a huge iPad. But, mostly, she sat and she stared and she watched. Sometimes, she watched me, and then we were watching each other. And then, it hit me: while she’d spent however long sitting at this table and doing nothing, I’d also been doing that!

And here’s the secret: to haunt isn’t to let the world go by. It’s not so much dying as it is living. Haunting is active. In fact, to haunt is a chat with the world. In a million galaxies, a million miles, in this timeline, and at this hour, we’d been lucky enough to be the scenery together. And isn’t that great?

Photo courtesy of the author

Across

1. As in Poison or League

4. With skill and consideration

8. Like Captain and Finding

10. An original name

11. The current place

14. Abbreviation of Reznor’s band

15. Parisian rivière

16. To move swiftly

17. Diminutive; suffix

18. Like DeSantis and Swanson

19. Peak; highest level

21. A task or pledge

24. Arthurian Wizard

28. The sport of snow sticks

31. Outside; prefix

32. To smash; male sheep

34. Deceptive magic

35. Father; colloquial

36. Native or prevalent

38. Water; frozen

39. Both; prefix

40. The basic molecule

41. Short shortened

Down

1. Serious and forceful

2. Doctor of pets

3. Norse giant

5. Year; per

6. Roof or vault

7. Stipulation or principle

9. A duty or responsibility

11. Honorific for male authority

12. Brian of Roxy Music

13. Wildebeest; synonym

20. A doctor’s magnetic camera

21. Broad and general

22. Backspace, in short

23. North Indian territory; disputed

24. Mass communication

25. A large gathering of equestrians and cattle herders

26. Anger or distrust

27. Parent’s mother; colloquial

29. Decorative carp

30. Dutch Tribunal

33. Controlled stimulant

37. Like a stream; with flow.

A Picture Worth 164 Words

Mateus Ng

My first day of preschool. I have no idea what happened that day, but what I do know is a photo taken on my first day of preschool. Looking at this photo, I see a boy. A version of myself; lost in the past. (I’ll never really know my younger self) Small, happy, and clueless for what’s to come. Laughing with my 5’3 mom, I stare into my father’s camera lens. A story not told in words, (not anymore haha) but captured with pixels instead.

I look at this photograph and smile. What was once an experience, is now long forgotten. However, through the lens of my father’s camera, I now have perspective. The perspective of what’s important to me. A moment in the present captured and frozen to be looked back and remembered (delight).

So yes, I think photography is a delight (and my father would agree). The simplicity and complexity, the past and present that all come together to make a photo.

Mercy Jordan Silver

I wish tragedy occurred because god wanted to live

Because a lonely orphan who created himself wanted to feel the love and loss of his mother

And the sickness and closeness of his father

Every emotion he couldn’t be able to experience he gave to humans

He gave us fear and pain and love and joy

Because he would never drown in the ocean he created

He could never be helpless and suffocating

He would never hunger or thirst

Water would always become wine

But tragedy is simply a drunk finding magic in a bottle instead of his wife’s apple pie

There’s no lonely god

Or longing omnipotence

Pain will never exist to serve

And we are all at the mercy of the stars and sun

Photo courtesy of the author

Nicholas Wong

Fumes of acetone and cigarette smoke mix together to create an almost nauseating and certainly cancer causing aroma, but I developed a talent for painting my toenails on the dashboard of a eighteen wheeler barreling down I-80 perfected only through years of practice and various nail polish stains on seat covers to prove it.

I’m distracted from my craft for a moment – my ankle is seared by a lit ash floating over from my mom’s side of the truck.

“Jesus Christ!”

“What?”

“Look what you did to me!” I scream, half joking, as I kick her and cause us to nearly swerve into another lane.

Immediately, we’re met with angry car horns from someone who no doubt has important places to be. We both fall into familiar laughter as the car goes by, driven by a man who does not find the situation nearly as funny as we do. Roads are filled with angry people. Of course that doesn’t exclude us, but we’re here to witness that anger a lot more than anyone else. Sometimes I don’t get it, how my mom does the long hauls, the never ending road trips, the hours on hours on hours. I join her each summer, but at least I get a break during the school year.

She drowns it all out with the radio, cranking up the volume and switching to her favorite station: Radio Bluebird, where she’s one of probably 300 loyal listeners. She says music keeps her sane, yet I don’t think anyone would guess it from her song choices.

“Yes! Corey Hart!” she exclaims as we catch the second verse of Hart’s infamous, “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night.”

I admit my mom objectively doesn’t have the best music taste, and this is definitely on the worse side, but I know the lyrics, and I sing along.

The song wraps up as we pull into a rest stop, wedged between a rusting pick up and silver Prius. Getting out, I hear the screech of metal against paint as my door taps the side of the Prius. But I hop out and, realizing that the owner was nowhere nearby, hurry into the restroom. On my way back to the truck I see my mom talking to an older man. He’s probably around 65, maybe 70 if he’s got good genetics, dressed in a worn, oversized camo jacket and paintstained cargos. I get within hearing distance soon enough to hear her say: “Stop, I really don’t need a story. You can come with,” and to see him open the truck door, scrapping the Prius even more, and climb in.

Pulling out of the rest stop parking lot, it’s awkward. I exchange sideways glances with my mom, looking just past the brim of the man’s trucker hat in hopes that he doesn’t accidentally look back our way.

Then, peeking over his hat, the man clears his throat just long enough to make me wonder if he’s sick.

“I really appreciate y’all picking me like this.”

“It’s not a problem for us, really. Long as you can bear our company”

With this, my mom grabs her sunglasses off the rear-view mirror and turns the radio back on. I grab the bottle of polish and return to my nails, rolling down the windows for ventilation. And the man begins to talk.

He rambles through stories and jokes, retelling bits of his own life in a heavy and familiar small town dialect. He brings characters to life through elaborate descriptions, each one being somehow strung together through aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, sisters, and brothers. He punctuates sentences with “Well I’ll be”’s, sprinkling in “ain’t”’s and “y’all’’s along the way. The way he talks is thick and sweet like maple syrup or molasses. You get stuck in it and come out the other side with no real recollection of the story he told.

This storytelling is not unique. All hitchhikers do it. Something about hours in a truck of strangers makes people break, it brings out secrets, lies, memories, and just what some people want to get off their chest. The truck breaks this man sooner than I would have imagined and I find myself lost in the sugary amber gold of his voice. I can almost dance in the elongated syllables and contractions. I am fossilized like an ant fallen victim to the amber of a pine tree. The biggest thing that strikes me as this man goes on is he doesn’t rush. I’m used to conversations being squished between passing periods, whispers while teachers turn their backs, sentences sped through just to get them out. Instead, he takes his time, almost intentionally elongating each word, pausing to let time pass. He lets me get trapped, get carried away. It’s a gift I don’t even think he knew he was giving me, but I receive it and I listen. While these stories, told alongside tangents and unrelated anecdotes, are no more clear than conversations I’m used to, I’m not constantly catching up or chasing down meaning in long gone words. [J. Atkins]

Leo Blum