You’ve heard a little bit about my failed attempts to woo a fellow Sagehen by the name of Amy Pawl. But I don’t think I’ve told you this story from our early days of getting acquainted.
I met Amy in an American Literature class taught by Professor Arden Reed. The topic of this class was “Das Unheimliche in Early 19th Century American Literature.” Das Unheimliche is a German term for the uncanny—things that are familiar yet strange, attractive yet repulsive at the same time. We were studying the works of Edgar Allen Poe (The Black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher, Melville (Moby Dick), William Cullen Bryant (Thanatopsis), and others.
Amy was very enthusiastic about any kind of literature, so it was easy to strike up a conversation with her after class. Before long Amy and I had made it a habit to walk to our next classes together on the other side of campus, discussing books and assignments. Gradually the conversation evolved from literature to general chit-chat, and I began learning a bit more about her.
Amy was from Michigan—a fellow Midwesterner—and she had grown up in a nice house in a suburban neighborhood, surrounded by woods and a creek, just like I had. She sang in the glee club, liked to write short stories, really missed fall in the Midwest, shuffling through piles of leaves and going to apple orchards.
She asked about my family and what it was like growing up in Wisconsin, and I said that I really liked Wisconsin but hadn’t seen much of it lately. I told her about my summers in Mexico and South America collecting butterflies, which she thought was odd but interesting. The conversation morphed into a discussion of how everyone has eccentricities and it’s only a matter of time before you discover what they are.
So I said let’s cut to the chase, what are your eccentricities? Without hesitating, she said “junk food.” And I just laughed. Because she’s five-foot six and thin, quite healthy looking, and nothing about her looks or personality would indicate a junk food problem. I asked her what kind of junk food she was talking about.
She looked down, clearly embarrassed, and said “Circus Peanuts.”
“Circus Peanuts?!” I laughed again. “Those disgusting puffy orange things? Look, I love junk food too. I eat all kinds of junk food. But Circus Peanuts? No one actually eats Circus Peanuts. They’re repulsive.”
“Das Unheimliche,” she said. “They attract me and repulse me at the same time. I despise them, yet I simply must have them.”
“I understand,” I said sadly. “Is there anything I can do?” She shook her head, resigned to her fate.
I don’t remember what else we talked about that day because an idea hatched in my brain and I started thinking through the logistics of making it happen.
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Invisible fishing line is one of the greatest inventions ever. You can use it for all kinds of things besides catching fish, and you never have to worry about it breaking or being seen. It was perfect for the prank I pulled on Amy Pawl.
About 15 minutes before our next class with Professor Reed was scheduled to begin, I stopped by the empty classroom to make the necessary preparations.
First, I hopped up on the big round discussion table in the center of the room and reached up to push a ceiling tile just an inch or so out of the way. I then strung my fishing line through the gap, tied an object to one end, and left it dangling in the gap just above the ceiling tile, hidden from view.
Next I threaded about twenty feet of fishing line across the ceiling and out the classroom door. I hid my reel of invisible fishing line in the fire extinguisher box mounted on the wall outside the classroom. Then I waited impatiently for class to begin.
The story under discussion that day was Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” About midway through class, Professor Reed asked us how the story was an example of Das Unheimliche. No one knew quite what to say. So Professor Reed offered his opinion. He postulated that the first paragraph of the story was intentionally written in a cadence meant to simulate human shuddering—lots of starts and stops and sudden breaks—to create an “Unheimliche” sense of fear and loathing beyond the words themselves.
One of the students asked for clarification, saying she wasn’t really quite sure what Unheimliche meant. Professor Reed responded by asking that student to try and think of an example, something from her own life that created the feeling of simultaneous allure and revulsion. She couldn’t think of an example, so Professor Reed opened it up to the group. “Can anyone give us an example of something that conjures Das Unheimliche?” he asked.
Amy and I glanced at each other and smiled, recalling our recent discussion about Circus Peanuts.
“Amy?” said Professor Reed. “Did you have an example to share?”
She blushed. “No, not really. I was just thinking of, oh never mind, it’s ridiculous.”
Professor Reed pressed her. “Nothing is ridiculous, what did you have in mind?”
“Nothing, nothing…”
Another student saved her by offering his own example of Das Unheimliche. While he was speaking, I quietly excused myself and left the room, closing the door behind me.
I quickly extracted my reel of invisible fishing line from the fire extinguisher box, walked back to the classroom door, and peered in through the small window on the closed door. The discussion was carrying on as normal.
I gave my fishing line a tug. The small object tied to the other end of the line appeared, hovering in the air over the center of the table in the classroom. I slowly lowered it down, inch by inch.
No one noticed it until it was just a couple of feet off the table, suspended in mid-air and rotating just slightly—a puffy orange thing dangling inexplicably from who knows where.
“What the…?” said one of the students.
“How the…?” said another.
“Circus Peanut!!” said a third.
There was a commotion, mostly laughter, but it wasn’t coming from Amy Pawl. She was beet red, hands over her mouth. I couldn’t tell if she was aghast, amused, or mortified.
Turned out she was all three. The first thing she did after class was punch me, hard, in the shoulder. “You’re insane, you know that?” she said.
“I was just trying to help illustrate a difficult concept,” I explained.
“Right, that’s what you were doing.”
“Are you still walking with me to Anthropology?”
“I guess. But you have to answer one question first.”
I agreed, ready to explain the intricacies of how I had planned and implemented such an ingenious prank. “Where’s the rest of the bag of Circus Peanuts?” she asked.
