Dear Doolino,
Emory Residence Life and Housing Operations has been relatively kind to me. I was given a spacious room in Alabama Hall (with my own bathtub), my resident adviser (RA) is helpful and, on most days, my roommate and I get
along. But my roommate is from Los Angeles, and I’m from Houston. With the World Series in full swing, tensions in our room have been at an all-time high. I can tell that my roommate is just a front-runner fan because when we watched Game 2 together, I mentioned the terms “barn burner” and “full count,” and she asked me to explain what they were. Additionally, for the past two weeks, she has been wearing her ratty Dodgers T-shirt every night to bed just to piss me off. As for me, my step godfather owns the Houston Astros, and I have been on the sidelines of games since before I can remember. No matter who wins the World Series, someone is going to feel the loss. There will be resentment. How do I navigate this tension? Most importantly, how do I ensure that the Astros will win?
Best,
Sportsmanship is a Scam
Dear Sportsmanship is a Scam,
I’ve been around the bases quite a few times, and it seems to me that considering you and your roommate are a couple of Emory students, you are taking sports way too seriously. Have fun with it. Rag on each other with loads of humor. Tell her your deepest, darkest desires involving Andre Ethier and Clayton Kershaw, and maybe she will open up to you about the dreams she’s been having about Justin Verlander. Perhaps channel all the passion you both feel for baseball and attend an Emory sports game. In the end, we’re all on the same mortal team.
Love,
Doolino
Dear Doolino,
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about life. In particular, every morning I wake up, walk to the bathroom to wash my face and end up staring down at my tube of Colgate Total Toothpaste Advanced Whitening for five minutes before having the will to actually get around to brushing my teeth. You see, I feel like I’ve been led astray by oral care
manufacturers who made a product called “toothpaste” that should actually be called “teethpaste.” I have more than one tooth! As a linguistics major on the pre-dental track, I feel this to be a grave mistake and injustice. Please provide some clarity.
Best,
Loyal to Listerine
Dear Loyal to Listerine,
Please don’t tell me you take five minutes to stare down your hairbrush before you brush your hair. Please don’t tell me you wait an extra five minutes after that to put on your legwarmers. Do you pause before tying your footwear? What about your earphones? How absurd to let this thought process get in the way of your completions of such rudimentary tasks. Look up the definition of a compound noun.
Love,
Doolino
Dear Doolino,
Halloweekend really got the best of me, and after one too many gin and tonics I accidently posted a picture on my Instagram that I thought I posted on my Finsta. I was at Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium and ran into my graduate student TA. Together, we took a selfie with a sacrilegious mural of Jesus. Doolino, I went to Catholic school K-12 and my dad is a priest. Subsequently, a lot of my childhood friends took a screenshot of the photo I posted, and it got passed around my hometown community. What do I do?
Sincerely,
Repenting Outside Raoul
Dear Repenting Outside Raoul,
The best thing about to going to college is that you get to live out your religious truth on your own terms, free from whatever institutions controlled your childhood. It sounds like you have some work to do in regard to figuring out the truth that belongs to you. When coming to terms with certain aspects of our childhood, desecration is a dark road. Take a long walk through Lullwater.
Love,
Doolino
