My first tour of the year came along, and I found myself ushering thirty communists around campus in a tour that went thirty minutes over time and encompassed 20% more campus than usual. Before I go on I should point out that by communists I mean that they, apparently, live in a commune, not that they are big-C Communists.
Anyway, each week the tour guides get sent an e-mail with information about any large groups that will be coming. So we can, you know, complain to our roommates about having to show campus to seventeen Swedish tourists who don't care about distribution requirements and want to know about architecture. That kind of thing.
Anyway, I found out that "[man's name] and friends" were scheduled for our slot. This was strange already. Usually the groups have names like "Vlad's Family," or "Grades Grades Grades High School" or "Southwestern Baptist Church." Who was this [man's name] and why were 29 of his closest friends coming to campus with him?
I had already decided that I would volunteer to give the tour today. The weather was nice and the week before another of the tour guides in my slot had volunteered, letting the rest of us who were too bloated or sleep deprived or harassed take a week off. Well, I was feeling pretty good, I was wearing a nice blue scarf my mother bought me and life was looking up. So I said to the others, "I'll take the thirty old people. You can go home." They thanked me and left.
Then the group arrived, slow-moving and fifteen minutes late. I introduced myself and we set out. On our way to my first stopping point, I asked the man walking in the front what the occasion was.
"Well," he said, "we're from a camp."
My thought went something like this: ".....?"
"A community of adults," inserted his friend, and named a town in New Jersey I was unfamiliar with.
That didn't matter, though, because at this point I was taking stock of their clothes. Not hippies, I concluded, or at least not traditional ones. Maybe these were centrist hippies. Still. They lived in an "adult community." Presumably they weren't all engaged in a massive orgy or wife-swap 24/7. The idea of a commune made much more sense.
"Most of us were teachers," said the first man. Then they demanded to see the science buildings.
An hour and a half later I had been photographed in a group shot with them, asked more questions than I usually get per semester, and told that I was going places with my writing. I decided that I need to give tours to communists in their sixties more often.
Or maybe not. I only had ten minutes for lunch before my French class, so I said goodbye after dropping them at the museum (their next tour) and rushed off.
Someone else better take the big tour next week. I did my bit.