Dear Yuantee,
I came to Tufts to be a big fish in a small pond, but two years later I'm still a guppy. It's not that I have no redeemable skills. I'm tall and handsome, play guitar, like to cook sometimes, used to skateboard in high school and am from Arizona. Still, my lack of popularity — or better yet, my relative obscurity — leaves me lonely at times, and there's nothing my unattractive girlfriend can do about it. Sometimes, Yuantee, I even regret not joining a fraternity. What should I Zhu?
-Losing on Latin Way
LLW,
If by now you've noticed the wordy virtuosity of my most prolific prose, you would also know that I write in similar fashion to the way Charlie Sheen lives his life: in one speed he and I call "go." But before I do get "going," allow me to warn you with an Oscar Wilde quote my grandmother told me last week: "There are only two tragedies in life: One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." She told me this after I admitted that I only wanted my column in the Daily to impress a girl, that this girl is still unimpressed and that my heart still reeks of warm whiskey and thoughts of failure. The big fish in the small pond is often the loneliest, most feared and perpetually drunkest.
That said, just because you are feeling lonely does not mean there is no one out there looking for you. Let's go through your qualities.
Being tall and handsome certainly gives you options generally unavailable to the short and ugly. Keep company with inferior-looking folk, and you will look even more appealing and dare I say become a "big fish," though one in an admittedly very small pond with limited room to grow. Should you feel brave, I recommend gravitating toward the taller and more handsome "bigger fish" and learning from the best what it takes to evolve.
You play guitar. I am pleased to say I live with the three surviving members of the hugely popular Tufts rock band Knives For Sale, who plays every Thursday night at The Burren in Davis Square (except on Senior Pub Nights), who keep me up at night playing sloppy Warren Zevon covers in our dining room and who endlessly discuss the artistic plausibility of rounding out their sound with a second drummer. So tell them you drum. Just show up tonight at The Burren with some sticks and alcohol on your breath and tell their figurehead lead guitarist you also used to skateboard. And if you can sing at all (let me stress "at all," because their lead singer can't), they will let you sing — perhaps a duet with their gorgeous Hawaiian chanteuse. They may not be Timeflies, but they get free drinks every week.
As for your unattractive girlfriend, I can see this being a lingering problem. However, before I suggest such a drastic measure as termination, I would need to know more information. Women are such delicate things, really. Tigress blood. Perhaps merely rekindling the waning flame is just the spark you need to feel big and loved.
Your girl aside, party with the big fish in the big ponds. Study their ways. Watch lots and lots of Charlie Sheen footage, including the last eight seasons of "Two and a Half Men" and everything before that. As the son of a movie star, he's been a big fish all his life. And by God, does he ever seem to be "winning."
So I say ignore Oscar Wilde, ignore my grandmother, and chase that dragon.
At least, that's what I did and what Charlie Sheen would Zhu.
