Thumbs Up
A Year of Thumbs – After this issue of The Heights, this particular Thumbmeister will disappear back into the rugged and untamed wilderness from which he came (known in some parts of the world as Wisconsin). TU/TD will still be around, but it will sound different, look different, and, above all, smell different. A new voice, most likely a slightly more stable one, will take over. So before I run out of space on this page, I think it’s time to toss out a few final thumbs before we all grow old and die.
Sudden and Unnecessarily Dark Reminders of Mortality – This has really been the main goal of TU/TD this past year, because everyone knows that the core of college journalism is reminding students that their lives are passing in front of their eyes.
10 O’Clock Mass on Upper – Monday through Thursday, a candlelit Mass is held at 10 p.m. in St. Joseph’s Chapel. It’s one of the few things that I would sincerely give a Thumbs Up without any of the absurd nonsense that usually makes up the content of these things.
‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ – In 1886, Leo Tolstoy wrote one of the best stories of all time. It takes a few hours to read at most and will affect the way you live every day.
The French American – After all of this talk of mortality and literature, it’s important that we don’t forget about the bread and butter of TU/TD: bread and butter. On Monday morning, Lower had this strange and delightful meal option: a French toast sandwich with egg, sausage, bacon, and all that good stuff. It left us stuffed for a couple of weeks, but it was worth it.
Thumbs Down
The End – Walking down a back alley somewhere in the Greater Metro Boston area, as I do most days, I pondered the quickly approaching end of my Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down columns. There were so many ideas I was never able to implement. I always wanted to embed an anachronistic code that spelled out my name. That was it. That was the idea I never got to. It would have been kind of cool. But now it’s too late, the bottom of the page is approaching and the fictional version of me is walking out of the alley and onto the street, which symbolizes leaving this gloomy year of bizarre thumbs and entering the inscrutable future (the rat chewing on a bag of old Chinese food behind the alley garbage can symbolizes pretentiousness). Standing on Commonwealth Ave., I looked around and noticed my Great-Uncle Jerry on the roof of the apartment building across from me making an obscene gesture. Nice. Looking down at my hands, I formed a fist and stuck my thumb out. Pointing it forward I gave the world a big Thumbs Up. After a prolonged and dramatic pause, I began to walk down Commonwealth Ave. and turned my thumb sideways, hoping that someone might give an old and tired Thumbmeister a ride home.
Featured Image by Kelsey McGee / Heights Editor
