Posted by Julie Anderson People 0. The essays are funny and lighthearted, touching and dramatic, philosophical and contrite. The pieces are populated with a plucky graduate student, a sorrowful son, a regretful mother, an awkward teen, a tomboy pupil, a clueless mom, and someone starting over. Quimby, and Robert Menzimer. Thanks also to the many other fine East Bay writers who submitted essays for the contest. The way it worked was this: Back in , a couple of friends of mine from Cal invited me to a little party at their house in North Berkeley.
I figured it would mostly be other grad students, no big deal, so I showed up with a bottle of top-shelf Two Buck Chuck, expecting to chat about research, teaching, and ramen. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, had sharp features, dark, curly hair that had grown out a bit too much, and a laser-like focus I found slightly unnerving. Despite the awkward start, we chatted a while longer.
I told him I used to live in China and was studying Chinese literature. He told me he enjoyed practicing the circus arts on the weekend: the flying trapeze, acrobatics, that kind of thing. I mentioned that I could juggle. What the hell is Sergey Brin doing here? I wondered, then found out a little later that he was a college friend of one of my hosts, and that the party was a singles mixer, unbeknownst to the invitees. Peter and Colin had thought it would be fun to throw a bunch of their straight friends togetherβsix men and six womenβand see what happened.
The question just popped out. It seems so rude now, but I guess, at the time, I figured, well, why not? Someone procured three tennis balls and I began to juggle while counting to 30 in Chinese.
It was harder than I thought, but somehow I managed it without dropping a ball. Was it some weird form of self-sabotage that I never contacted him? Or was I just too scared to take a risk and leave the comfortable world of academia? The irony, of course, is that I left academia anyway. I chose to remain in the Bay Area and teach high school rather than take a tenure-track job elsewhere. But the truth of the matter is, I love my life here in the East Bay.
