Tonight was another Swarthmore tradition: Screw Your Roommate. Each person sets up their roommate (I was set up by my RA, being in a single) with a blind date. Each couple is told to dress in a paired costume. They go to the dining hall and have to figure out who their partner is. For example, I set my friend Ginzy up as the Eye of Sauron; he had to find the One Ring (and did, and had a lovely evening with her).

I myself was the Scottish King. I dressed in a suit, kingly red robe, crown, and sword. I set up an empty chair, gave my toast, and let fly with my terrified rant at Banquo’s ghost. (It was awesome.) Partway through, Lady Macbeth (in a huge black hoop dress she made herself) came and found me and chimed in with her lines at the appropriate times. The date went well enough that, later in the evening, I wound up at the semi-formal dance.

Terrible pop music was blasting. No one was dancing. So I went over to the laptop music was playing from and swapped it out for classical music. I then taught a bunch of people to waltz, and led waltzing for a while.

After a few waltzes, some girl (the DJ?) came over and replaced the laptop with her own. Terrible pop returned, and everyone immediately stopped dancing. After a while I went over to her and got her to put on Jamiroquai. Lo and behold: EVERYONE DANCED AGAIN. Why? Because Jamiroquai is AWESOME.

This back-and-forth continued for a while. Eventually she got sick of my trying to put on good music (Madeon’s Pop Culture was a big hit) and stopped accepting requests. At which point there was a mass exodus, myself included.

All in all it was a good day and lovely evening. Blind dates are fun! (Also, people need to stop telling me that I’m a good dancer. I’m in danger of believing them, and that can only end poorly.)