Emoticon at Princeton

Touring campuses with my daughter and ex is like falling down a rabbit hole. I imagine an avatar of my daughter jauntily walking from dorm to classroom as buildings are named and the campus briefly fills in and falls away behind us. Down and down we fall.

I'm wondering "why are looking if we can't possibly afford this, would she be happy and challenged here, why do so many of them wear those preppy wool jackets, does everyone belong to an eating club?" By this you can see we spent yesterday touring Princeton. "Very pretty," says Caitlin, referring to the stone and ivy clad walls and vistas of trees obligingly multi-hued. We heard about revolutionary war battles taking place on campus "right here a musket shot from Washington made a dent under the ivy," the 6-to-1 ratio of students to profs, the senior thesis, and the joys of a year abroad.

Just as our group of 20 was about to walk into another history drenched quad someone shouted "I HEART PRINCETON!!!!"

"Wow, yeah," shouted back our tour guide, adding that such unsolicited comments were usually much worse. But how perverse that the word love, represented by a heart symbol online, should then be used in a shout that is clearly seen in the shouter's mind as a text message.

Caitlin whispered to me, "at UCON they shouted: 'Send me your virgin daughters.'"