A Trip Down Memory Lane, Renamed “Old People Are Hilarious Boulevard”

by Nick Summers | August 13, 2006 at 6:03 pm

A Trip Down Memory Lane, Renamed "Old People Are Hilarious Boulevard"What a lovely afternoon! Birds are chirping, children are laughing, and look, here's a stoop sale with books! What shall we buy? The Client? Too long. Best Lesbian Erotica? We've had better. Look no further: Scaling the Ivy Wall: Getting Into the Selective Colleges (© 1975), and it's only a dollar!*

Truly, it is an artifact. What kind of car is a "flivver"? Who or what is Bennington? A telling passage:

Despite the fact that it will cost over $6,000 a year at most selective colleges, the applications continue to pour in. Obviously, whatever Harvard or Vassar [Ed. note: ???????] costs, it seems worth the sacrifice.

As you might expect, the most entertaining reading is about "The Changing Campus." After noting, bizarrely, that hitchhiking is a complete necessity on every college campus, the authors turn to the brave new world of sex: 

Take co-ed dormitories. Girls and boys live on separate floors, or in separate entries. But then an affair begins, and a suite that is male or female becomes de facto co-ed. Cohabitation, they call it, and there is no word for the distress this situation can cause impressionable roommates.

Not even the realization that the class of '75 included a lot of our parents can make that less amusing.

*(Actual titles, seen consecutively)

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