Possibly the Best story Ever

        We decided to have a barbeque today. There were six of us, and we went to the store, bought bratwurst, came home and set up our little Webber grill in the court yard of Cutter – Ziskind. We were promptly sent out to the driveway by the House President who decided our lighter fluid soaked flaming coals were a fire hazard. So there we were, sitting on the curb, bratwursts sizzling away, when the four smokers in the group decided to light up. Normally this wouldn’t have drawn any attention, but this particular evening a very skinny, very short Asian woman was walking out of the Cutter-Z dining hall and remarked in a throaty off color sort of way,
        “Smokers!” she walked over to us.
        “It’s good to see smokers,” she said, very matter-of-factly.
        “What are you doing? Cooking?” She squatted down next to us and set her bag on the ground. We showed her the sausages and in her strong accent she proclaimed that Smith food sucks. It’s true, we agreed.
        “Got anything to drink with that?” was her next question. Some people raised their cups of beer.
        “Good!” she said again, and then told us that the Smith dining staff wouldn’t let her drink her vodka in the dining hall, so she was going to have to do it out here. She produced a paper cup and an entire quart of straight vodka from her handbag.
        “Want some? I like you, you smoke. You can all have some of my vodka.”
        Oh, god. Crazy woman with a quart of vodka. We asked her if she was here visiting, or something, and she told us that she had been lecturing – she was the chair of the film studies department at New York University (as in Tisch). We collectively blinked.
        “They only let you smoke outside? I smoke in my office, I’m the chair so I can do whatever I want,” she laughed in the broken English of someone too brilliant to care.
        “Where did you go to school?” I asked.
        “Princeton, then Columbia. Where are you all from?” We gave our various homes, and someone said Nova Scotia, Canada.
        “Oh! I’ve been there,” she offered. The girl asked why, in a why-the-hell-would-anyone-want-to-go-there sort of voice.
        “To cash a check,” she said. Everyone paused. We digested the comment as our bratwursts popped and hissed away. Someone sipped some beer. With barely a pause she settled herself more firmly on her heels and took off.
        “When I was in college we were rebels. You know when you get those American Express Traveler’s Checks? Well, if you lose them they give you another book for free, so then you can get two books,” she laughed from her throat (haah!) “so then we took the old books to Nova Scotia and cashed them! Back then there were no cameras in Nova Scotia banks. I cashed a thousand dollars of Traveler’s Checks.” Our eyes all popped as we laughed along with this past-eccentric (surely genius) character.
        “I like you, you are women,” she proclaimed. Someone mentioned she would be going to NYU for graduate studies, and would be happy to get out of the country.
        “I wish it was the country!” she snorted as she lifted her featherweight frame off of the pavement, “Northampton is just a god damned half baked burb.”
        She smiled, wished us a good barbeque, and walked off down the street with her paper cup of vodka.