COMMUNICATIONS

HELLO, WHRUH

The Editor, DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE: Dear Sir:

At any gathering of Dartmouth men, or men of any other college, there is always present an individual yclept "Whruh." One meets Allardvce Ogg '22, one's roommate in South Mass., greets Allardyce affectionately and by name, then notices with him a man "whose face is familiar."

Is that man a '2l man, a '22 man, a '23 man? A second's ghastly pause and he is greeted thus, "Hello, Whruh." The last word is said hurriedly, with no emphasis. Whruh is everywhere. Twenty times in an evening one greets him, always dressed differently and somehow different of face.

Here is a problem that lies deep in all of us. We are auite embarrassed after a chat with Whruh to discover that he is really Joe Minnenwerfer and that he sat two seats away in Biology I for a week, in 1919. Or he is Henry Volstead who roomed on the top floor of Hitch and was never in. We worry and fret about our impotence before hundreds of new faces popped up before us for the first time in five years.

"I remember your face, but— has it ever been phrased suavely? What can one say? Must the man be addressed as "Whruh?' Particularly when he perversely recalls one's own name? Should men be required to wear name-plates ?

The most serviceable memories fail before the ranks of Whruhs. In four years at Hanover one is more or less contemporaneous with 3500 individuals, each with a name. In most cases the face becomes familiar, but the name, ah, the name? To narrow our inquiry, four or five or six hundred entities are in our class. Audrey Stipple lived in Richardson. We lived in South Mass. Audrey majored in French. We went to Tuck. Audrey ate at the Bagley throughout. We ate at the A. A. for long stretches. Audrey's hobbies were philately, the Dalmatian drama, and pinochle. Our hobbies were dice, trap-shooting, and the Restoration drama. We saw each other a few times at the movies and in chapel. Years pass. We attend a Dartmouth function. Almost at the door we run into Audrey. He and I mutter to our sub-conscious, "The face is familiar, but the name—" and both break into a blurred "Hello, Whruh." We are Whurh. He is Whurh.

Both of us feel deeply embarrassed at our failure to select the correct name out of all the thousands to which our ears at some time or another have been attuned.

The Elks, never at a loss, handle this poser easily by calling everyone "Bill." But suppose one's particular animadversion is that name? The G.A.R. claim to have solved it with the generic "Comrade." That hardly does. If one called Whruh "Classmate" would not whole generations rise up in wrath? No better are the suggestions Contemporary, Friend, Jack, Associate.

It is perhaps cowardly to pose a question and then to give no answer. Speaking for all Whruhs we might say that the fact that a name has slipped away makes no difference to us. We might contend that no one familiar with the world would resent another's lapse of memory. But is this so ?