Planet Stanford

With a few hours to kill before my flight to London departed and not wanting to kick my heels around San Francisco airport I took the decision on the spur of the moment get off 101 and take a look at Stanford University.

I had heard rumours about an alternate, parallel world existing and wanted to see if they were actually true.

On planet Stanford apparently only the rich, beautiful and super smart are allowed in and I wanted to see it for myself.

Almost immediately after leaving the highway it was confirmed to me. I found myself driving up a tree lined road surrounded by manicured lawns and bubbling fountains. Ahead of me sat a low rise Spanish hacienda, squat, resplendent and seriously wealthy.

The Californian sun glinted through the leaves. The birds sang songs that only happy well fed and groomed birds can. Most birds sound desperate. Sodden Scottish crows are fucking miserable. 

A Stanford sparrow could lead a bel-canto opera.

I parked my car in a pristine carpark on campus and climbed out dressed appropriately for 15hours of travel; 7 year old shorts, t-shirt and flip flops.

On the greenest grass you have ever seen sturdy handsome young men threw small rugby balls between them. Studious pretty bespectacled young women sat cross legged under pine trees reading poetry and groups of teenagers quietly debated 17^th century Hungarian politics.

Even the air was cleaner. It was as if the dirt and grime of Highway 101 only a 5minute drive away couldn’t break through the invisible force field protecting the Stanford idyll.

I stood a safe distance away. I was still jet lagged, smoking and drinking polystyrene coffee.

I was hiding.

No one smokes on planet Stanford and the few who looked in my direction gave me the sort of look normally reserved for lepers with child fiddling tendencies.

I peered into their chino and polo shirt filled perfect lives. I was a voyeur and stayed only for the time it took to smoke one cigarette.  I felt so out of place it was unsettling.

Stomping out the cigarette on the pristine tarmac I climbed back into my budget hire car and re-joined the dust, dirt and strip malls of 101.

Planet Stanford offered me nothing other than confirming its existence and making me feel grubby, poor and unhealthy.

But I’m not that unhealthy or even that grubby. I might have been skint in comparison but really I’m just a normal person with pretty much average everything.

Looking back on that moment now I can see it for what it was.

Those twatty, cheesy, happy clappy, arm and hammer, cleverer than you will ever be kids were the freaks, not me. So there that’s that.

As I grew up everyone I knew, who happened to think they were in a position to give me advice, would tell me fitting in wasn’t the way to go.

Stand out from the crowd. 

Don’t be a sheep. 

Lemmings are the stupid ones.

If Colin jumped off the bridge would you do the same?

Well no. I wouldn’t jump off the bridge but I might laugh with him at a drawing he just did of a penis on Shirley’s school jotter.  

I couldn’t then, and still can’t for that matter see the parallel that was always drawn between me getting into trouble by joining in with someone else’s silly prank and jumping to a horrible icy watery death. But they were the grown ups so they must know best.

So the wise advice I received was to not follow the crowd and make my own, unique way in the world. 

Sage advice indeed but it never really took into account the most immediate real world issues which in doing so this would have presented me:

• People who stood out got punched, bullied and ended up with penises drawn on their school books.
• People who stood out generally had no friends.
• People who stood out generally were poor and had toast breath.

So I didn’t. I did my utmost to blend into the middle and kept saying no I wouldn’t jump off the bridge whilst staring at my shoes.

I hid behind the crowd clutching onto the median pole and watched from a safe distance as other less fortunate ones got wedgied. It was a survival technique which served me well.

But of course in the long run, the spekky kid with permanent marker water vole whiskers drawn onto his face ends up as David Bowie. The poor kid with a plastic Tesco’s school bag ends up as Morrissey or Jon Bon Jovi. 

They are the ones who end up with more girls and money than they can handle. And this is how it should be. The world is doing the right thing when this happens.

Its Karma working properly.

Getting lost in the crowd isn’t so bad either though. If I was an Impala sauntering through the savannah I would make sure I was in the middle. It’s a guarantee of safety. The odd weird one jumping around doing handstands to impress the girls on the periphery might look cooler. He might even get more interest from the girl Impalas (Impala-esses?)  but I guarantee I will be having the last laugh as a pride of lions chew on his ears.

In my world I know it means I will never be the first to find Eldorado but it does mean I will survive long enough to visit it some time later as a tourist. And with a handy audio guide rather than a nasty dose of malaria.

How all this is linked to the beautiful freakish people of Stanford I honestly don’t know. On one hand I was trying to make them out to be the oddballs and on the other they seem to be the epitome of what is considered in khaki wearing American wholesome and good looking.

I guess it’s all relative, in Stanford I stood out. I was the odd one out just waiting to have my head shoved down a toilet. In another environment I am as invisible as they come.

So my advice for what it’s worth is to blend in.

Only stand out if you are absolutely firmly 100% confident of your ground. Be bloody sure there are no lions around before you start your front leg hopping show. Make sure you can actually sing before climbing on the x-factor stage and be really sure of your peeing ability before challenging John ‘Pneumatic’ McPhee to a highest up the wall competition.

Be quiet, keep your head down and don’t shout a lot.

You might not get groupies, drugs or the attention of a bunch of in-season Impalas but that’s ok, you will also survive. Leave the rest to the Sid Viciouses, Jim Morrisons, Kurt Cobains or Indiana Joneses of this world.

They are better at it, much better looking and you can always watch them on telly or read about them in the newspaper from the safety of a warm comfortable magnolia life.

Or, ignore everything I have just said. Stand out, be seriously cool and have a lot of fun.

Just don’t do a header off a bridge because Colin did. 

That would be stupid.