Eccentric or Crazy? Cambridge kids…

What happens when you stick hundreds of intellectuals in an 800-year-old institution, throw in some robes, mix in a couple candles, and drizzle on the spice of old musty books?

You get a whole lot of ‘eccentric,’ elsewhere known as ‘sort of crazy.’

Example one:

“My housemate is weird,” said a friend over coffee. Not an uncommon statement, I raised an eyebrow.

“Just because he doesn’t emerge for hours on end, and just because he stacked ALL HIS FURNITURE in a cave against his door, it doesn’t mean he’s weird,” I reprimanded.

“No. Really weird. I tried to turn off his lights the other day when he was out. And you know what? The switch didn’t work. So I looked. And bam, there was a wire. A WIRE. Hanging from the lights to his computer.

“He had engineered his light switch to respond to his computer, which would respond to his phone. So that way he can TEXT his lights off and on.”

“Better watch what he’ll do to your toaster.”

St. John's College

Example two:

“So you want to be a medic?” I leaned against the kitchen counter, peering across at one of the friendlier strangers sharing my house. “Why?”

“No. Not a medic. A forensic scientist.” This kid was top of his class. He scored so well in exams that a college paid him to stay on. “I don’t want to work with people.

“I’d prefer to work with dead bodies,” he explained.

So did Hannibal Lecter.

“They don’t talk.”

…I better watch what he’ll do with the toaster, I thought.

Example Three:

There was an Engineering student who went to the States on a school trip and was put in an asylum.

“He was just really bizarre,” said my friend J. “Quirky. So they didn’t know what to do with him. Thought he was crazy.”

“Was he?”

“Not in the Cambridge sense,” J grinned and winked a bit, as though sharing some sort of secret joke.  ”The prof had to go down and get him out.”

“The Cambridge sense?” I questioned.

“Yup! The boy probably just wanted some tea.” Cambridge students really, really like tea.

And these are just the instances I can think of off the top of my head. There are more. There are hundreds and hundreds more.

It’s gotten to the point now where I’ve stopped being surprised at just all the peculiar things people do. I don’t notice when a friend, intoxicated at 3a.m., commences playing a masterpiece on the cello. I don’t notice because odds are, another friend will commence writing the next great novel while tap dancing by himself, emerging from his room after several weeks, blinky-eyed like a mole to the sun.

That’s just the way things happen here. People are eccentric. They’re smart and gifted and a little bit crazy.

Example four:

“I was in London the other day,” explained PhD-at-Cambridge, Law Degree-at-Yale friend. “Interviewing for a law firm.”

“I read some books.”

“And at this interview,” he continued, “they spoke to me in four languages. Which is fine since I speak six.”

“I read THREE BOOKS.”

“Fluently.” And he was once an underwear model, because sometimes life isn’t fair.

Strange sights occur daily. I am constantly dodging students who walk while reading. Sometimes people pass next to the graduate study space singing a hymn with the voices of angels. Men in top hats and gowns aren’t peculiar. It’s like Harry Potter mixed with Harvard mixed with crazyland.

And I absolutely, completely love it, Cambridge with all its eccentricities.

…even if I’m not letting anyone near my light switch. Or my toaster.