In my basement lies — both literally and figuratively — my childhood.
In the affectionately named “Barbie Graveyard,” one can find scores of Barbies, Barbie heads and legs, a broken ping-pong table covered in potential hand-me-downs waiting for their moment to shine with my non-existent younger sister and awesome board games such as “Ask Zandar,” “Mall Madness” and “Dream Phone.”
These playthings not only characterized what I did with my free time (i.e., all of it), but who I would choose to associate with. Classmates would have their parents arrange playdates for us because they heard rumors about my unparalleled Barbie collection.
My “best friend” admitted that she preferred my sister to me because my sister did not share my slightly obsessive — yet way ahead of my time in terms of comprehending sanitary procedure — rule forbidding my Barbies to share clothes.
You may think that fostering friendships at Penn is more complicated than Barbies. It isn’t.
Penn students have lots of toys: iPhones, Louboutins, Blackberries, Uggs, DVDs and IDs to name a few.
And on Penn’s campus these items substitute Barbie as a status symbol. Whether or not having these toys influences your popularity or your popularity influences your tendency to buy these toys I don’t know; but don’t try and tell me that in order to avoid looking like a loser waiting for class to begin you don’t whip out your Blackberry Storm and start texting (BBM-ing? Is that what its called?) a random contact.
And if your friend wears her leggings tucked into her Uggs, it seems that you too are most likely sporting the same look.
To be honest, I think this system is fantastic! I work hard enough in class that I really don’t want to spend more cognitive effort than is absolutely necessary when choosing a friend. And this makes the key to making friends relatively easy: have stuff!
And for those of you whose toys are sub-par: call me.
An RSS feed of The Spin is available
October 31st, 2008 at 6:09 pm
It’s like they say: you are what you buy!