Laura Boss

I WANTED TO GO TO PRINCETON

I wanted to go to Princeton
but I wasn’t smart enough
And anyway they didn’t take girls
in those days
I wanted to go to Princeton
but I didn’t
And anyway it was my brother’s
job to go to a good school
or at least get a scholarship
to a decent school even
if it were not Princeton
And it was my job if I couldn’t go to
Princeton to at least marry a guy
who had gone to Princeton
So when I was at a female school
Douglass twenty minutes from Princeton
I dated Princeton guys not Rutgers
guys whenever I could though I had
to take a less attractive looking
Princeton guy than I would have
if I had dated a Rutgers guy
And the Rutgers guy would have
moved up in looks if he took out
a Douglass girl rather than
a Radcliffe orVassar girl
And I could have married one guy from Princeton
His name was Freddie and he was serious
and thin and wrote me stacks of
letters on stationery with a Princeton logo
and when his Princeton envelopes arrived
I realized I liked the letters and stationery
more than I liked him
And another guy I liked from Princeton
nicknamed Gish was president of his
eating house, the only Jewish eating house
He would travel on the train sometimes to
see me at Douglass—and one weekend I
stayed over at that eating club while he as
president sat downstairs all night making
sure no guys got upstairs—
And I liked him, but I liked him apparently
more than that blond Princeton guy liked me
And so my brother did what he was supposed to do—
earned his full scholarship to Rutgers, became a
Henry Rutgers Scholar along with his classmate
Robert Pinsky who was “good in English”
according to my brother—

And my brother went on to Yale Law School with a
scholarship like he was supposed to do—
And I married the son of one of the wealthiest
Jewish men in Passaic County—
something I was supposed to do
( though to my disappointment my husband had not
gone to Princeton or Harvard or even Yale but to
NYU Business School)
But he was smart and nice and nice looking and it was what
I was supposed to do—
And after all, I had gone to Douglass
and after we were married
had to transfer to where we lived in Rutherford to FDU
and we all know no Princeton guy would
ever have gone out with a girl from FDU
though William Carlos Williams lived in that little
town in Rutherford
though I could finally concentrate on my courses
now that I was married—
( after all my job of getting married was now
accomplished)
And my senses bloomed
and my teacher brought my poems to William Carlos Williams
and even my marks soared
And I loved that school and its English teachers
as much and even more than
if I had been smart enough
to get into Princeton

First published in Searching for Daylight( GateHouse Publishers, 2002)