Surreal Story

Nate Kamiya
Tony Barnstone
ENG 302
3/3/09

Story #7

It was inexplicable. There was no explaining it. It had no accountability. They say you don’t ever forget where you were when you find out something like this. Honestly, I don’t remember where I was. I could have been trying to stay awake during International Governments or dribbling oatmeal out of the corner of my mouth in the CI. I just remember that people everywhere were talking about it. There were impromptu runners coming to all of the classrooms to make sure we all knew what had happened, say hi to the people they knew, and then have an awkward moment as they tried to extract themselves so they could tell another room the news: President Herzberger had turned into a grape.

According to the QC, it was sometime between the hours of one and three in the afternoon (I guess no one was keeping track because there was such a panic). Once the initial hysteria had settled down and everyone realized that she was in fact O.K., if a bit smaller, a kind of amicability set in. So she was a grape? Who cared. This was a West Coast liberal arts campus. Stranger things had happened, right? We should all just be accepting. After all, she still seemed to be the same Herzberger everyone had always known. By mechanisms mysterious to the staff of the health center, she was still capable of locomotion—some internal impetus rolling her in whichever direction she pleased. And, through equally mysterious means, she was still able to speak, quite normally. In fact, close friends and family said she sounded just as she always had to them, if a bit quieter (you had to lean in very close to catch everything).

Granted, though great efforts were made to maintain a level of normalcy, certain subtle, if noticeable changes were made. Grapes, grape juice, and raisins were taken off the menu at the CI and The Spot. A work study student was hired to sign documents and type emails for Whittier’s First Grape. Students and faculty were cautioned to pay extra heed to where they placed their feet, lest the unthinkable should happen. Herzberger’s “Walk and Talks” became “Talk and Rolls.” Our school has an affinity for uncatchy puns. Probably other things changed too, but I can’t say I really was paying all that much attention.

For a while, though, the rest of the world was. The campus was in something of a daze after a 72-hour onslaught by the 24-hour news. Herzberger herself made all the rounds—Leno, Tyra, even a memorable exchange with Stephen Colbert—talking about the changes in her daily life, the support from everyday people, and all the while promoting the college. But the attention dried up quickly, and though there was a surge in touring prospies, eventually that seemed to dry up too.

And, in the absence of any revelation from the basements of the Stauffer Science building as to the nature of what exactly happened, the collective (if fractured) consciousness of the campus began looking for its own answers. Everyone had their own idea about what had happened, and if you didn’t have one of your own, then you found someone else’s to latch onto and defended it like it was your own. My personal favorite was that it had to do with a particularly potent serving of meatloaf from Bon Appétit. When it was discovered that she had in fact lunched at the California Grill that fateful day, that one was grudgingly laid to rest, but there were more to take its place. Too many to type out, but certainly a lot.

And when everyone got tired of that, then it was time to give the whole thing meaning. If you were in the science building, you probably thought the whole thing was the definitive proof that dark energy did in fact exist, or was evidence of a universe parallel to our with which we had briefly intersected. To the Democratic Club, it was karma for the sins of Nixon, and meant that the college should have done more to exorcise his tarnished image, while the Republican Club claimed it was divine retribution by Nixon’s angry spirit, and meant that the college should have done more to defend his tarnished image. If you went to the weekly yoga sessions it was probably just some kind of cosmic hiccup, a transformation that happened midway through rather than at the end of the cycle.

And if you were here in Hoover, you had to write about it. In the last two weeks alone, there have been sonnets, monologues, one act plays, screenplays, short stories, flash fiction, novellas, slam poetry, each one with some new angle. One girl even teamed up with the music department to make a musical where everyone turned into some kind of fruit. It was some kind of political thing about our complacency as humans. And because apparently I have something to say, that’s my assignment too. Somewhere in here there’s a narrative. A one-to-four-page story that tidily sums up the whole person-to-grape affair. Character development. Maybe even romance. And lessons to be learned. Not sure what. Anyways, it’s all in here. I don’t know where, but it’s here. All I do know is that I don’t remember most of what happened anyways, and I need to print this. So if this means anything, it’s that I want to pass ENG 302.