My beloved school-chums and I were out on Lincoln Field on the night of, say, the fifth of January. The exact date is hardly important, though it did occur at some point in the eventide, around-abouts the date of the cold northeasterly winds. The salientest of the salient facts of that evening is that my chums and I were fooling around in the snow on Lincoln Field, by the statue of the great Marcus Aurelius himself. (The statue hardly comes into the story; it serves as mere “padding,” and also to situate the you, the reader, geographically within the elegant narrative.)

We were having a snowball fight, as in the days of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain and Williams Bryant Jennings, who were all crucified on the same cross of gold they got Jesus with. So there we were on the field, which was beautiful, sparkling, white, nary a golden cross to be found. We were all dressed up in our finest: I had on my woolen knickers and my sheepskin rubbers, and I was wearing gloves that looked very much like human skin. But I was soon in for the first shock of the evening: for my gloves, it turned out, they were my hands!

Suddenly, the snowballs were flying back and forth on Lincoln field! What a sight!!! I was so excited by all the frenzy that even now my nerves are all askew, so much so that I can barely find the exclamation mark on my keyboard! I had gathered up a little bundle of snow, which, to my snow-dazzled mind, looked rather like a small tot in my arms, similar to the child that I one day hope to have with the woman I love, except that the product of our love will not be made of frozen water, I don’t think. I readied the snowball to hurl at my opponent, when suddenly--POW! Someone had thrown a snowball at me. It bounced off to the ground, and I laughed in innocent delight. But then I looked closer at the snowball, and to my horrified confusion, it was a dove!!! I looked down at the snowball that was in my hands--It, too, was a dove! The whole of Lincoln Field wasn’t covered with snow! It was covered with doves! And they were dead.

Dearest reader, what sort of university, I ask, allows its fields to be covered with dead pigeons in the dark of winter? Were Marcus Aurelius alive, dear reader, and not a statue made of metal, I can assure you that he would gallop across that very same Lincoln Field in the mistaken notion that he was leading his troops into battle.

I came to Brown for the trendiness, the gentility, for the je ne sais quoi. Not once did the Vanity Fair article mention dead doves, not once! What sort of university sanctions such disregard for doves? What university? What? What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you the first time. All I know is something needs to be done, and I’m not the man for the job. Or the woman, either. I am neither the man, nor the woman, for this job. I have little idea of the intent with which I first began to tell you, the reader, about my horrifying experience.

All I know, dear reader, is that this is how I lost my innocence at college.