Adventuresssss with Sssssnakesssss and an Ivy Conversation

Being that I live on a farm, and have all my (seventeen years of) life, you might expect that I’ve had several close encounters with snakes, and probably killed a couple.

You’d be wrong.

My mother can remember a time when I was tiny – and I don’t think my brother existed – and a snake got into the house, into our sun room. She was on the phone, looked down and saw it. She ran to get my father and a shovel and until our floor was retiled just last year, you could see the shovel marks in the floor where they killed the snake.

I remember when I was a bit older – perhaps 6 or 7 – and my mother found a snake at the back gate. She told my brother and I to watch the snake from her sewing room window, which faces the gate. I’d been watching something on TV, and as soon as my parents went outside, persuaded my brother to come and watch it too. The snake slithered away, and my parents were furious with us – me – for not watching it.

When my brother was a young t(w)een, he and my father were walking along the irrigation channels when they saw a snake. My brother crossed over to the other side, while my father went back to the truck to get his trusty shovel. Then the snake began to swim over to my brother (who was, by this time, my father says, shaking). So my brother crossed sides – again – while my father took care of business.

On Thursday I was walking a bag of rubbish down to the tip (a short walk from our house) with my iPod in, convinced I wouldn’t see a snake because although it was a sunny day, it was cool and windy. I had my camera with me to take some photos of the creek, as the tip is on a rather pretty bend. Several metres from our shed (east of the end of our house, towards the tip), I stopped to take a photo of a feather in the grass, turned around and resumed walking. I looked down and saw – only a few feet away – a snake.

It was a brown snake, and long enough (a metre?), looking at me with its beady eyes, its head held up off the ground. I froze momentarily – my heart may have stopped – in absolute shock, before I began to walk backwards, slowly. My mind was blank, and I had no plan if it came towards me. Luckily enough, it didn’t. After a few seconds, it turned around and slithered out of sight.

Needless to say, I didn’t walk up to the tip, but dumped the rubbish in the shed (to do the next day) and retreated inside, legs weak. I suppose what freaks me out a bit is that I was squatting in the grass with my back turned to the snake for a while, taking photos, and I don’t like to imagine what would have happened if it had come much closer while I wasn’t looking.

It might sound like a relatively minor incident, but it was a fairly big scare. Snake stories are something you don’t forget.

***

Last Sunday saw another university phone interview, with a Yale alumnus ringing me for a “chat.” He was really nice; very laid back about it, cracking jokes, asking me about where I lived. Here’s an excerpt* from our conversation that probably didn’t follow any kind of script he’d been set:

Him: Do you plan to go back to the country after university?
Me: I’d like to work in the city, there are so many job opportunities, and then come back to the country, because I know I could get a job with the local newspaper or write from home.
Him: I was just thinking that in a town of only 1000 people** there’s not much chance of meeting the love of your life.
Me: Mmm.***
Him: I was just wondering if you were going to return to the farm and write about the country.
Me: Well, after I meet the love of my life.

Not your typical chit-chat in an interview, I can imagine. He was very entertaining though, made me very much at ease. Asked me mostly typical questions about my academic interests, other interests, ambitions, why Yale, why should Yale choose me, etc, etc; none of those tricky Columbian questions. And for anyone who has read Gossip Girl, it certainly wasn’t as terrible as Blair’s Yale interview. Overall I think it was pretty good, although one thorny point was that he called me “reasonably articulate.” I’m pretty sure he was trying to be flattering, but all I heard was a backhanded compliment. Nonetheless, he wished me luck at the end of the interview and told me that if I didn’t get in, I shouldn’t take it personally, because there are 20,000 other people just as good as me applying for 2,000 places.

I think of all of the three US universities that I applied to, Yale is the one I want to go the most badly. I don’t know if I will (go), even if I’m accepted; the parents remain an obstacle (and so does the cost.) I applied to Rochester because of the choice of degrees and flexibility of class and timetable structure; I applied to Columbia because of their renowned writing and journalism faculty. But Yale is a dream I’ve had for a long time. My father went there; my grandfather before him, and my grandmother’s father. So there’s a connection, but I don’t just want to go there because of a legacy; I want to go because I believe it is one of the best universities in the States, and I want that experience, and the opportunity to learn at such an elite level.

Finally bought the Juno soundtrack when I was in Melbourne dropping off my brother at school.**** Felt so weird that he’s now in year 11 and all the other forthies year 10s are in year 11, and the new year 10s are people I vaguely know from middle school a few years ago.

x
Just a girl*****
*or a general recollection
**Yeah, tiny, right?
***Deep, I know.
****Have been listening to it ever since and love it – it’s a fantastic album as a whole, a collection of alternative songs and classics, such as Buddy Holly and The Kinks
*****I’ve taken a leaf post out of Du’loque’s book blog. Not sure if it’ll be a regular thing; he’s probably got it copyrighted anyway. Hope you don’t mind, jdl! I’m not a huge fan of footnotes anyway, they particularly annoy me in books, especially if they’re at the back, and not at the bottom of the page, because I always feel compelled to turn back and read them, which interrupts the flow of the book, even if they are interesting (for example, in Wide Sargasso Sea, I found out that “little death” means orgasm. Quite an unforgettable footnote that captivated my whole year 10 literature class – remember, Pepito?)