All of the honors, status and privileges that pertain

What do you get, I hear you asking, with dreamy visions of pear pine-paneled secret societies and sailing regatta trophies in your mind, as an alumnus of Yale? What privileges pertain? What coded handshakes persist? My friends, I will tell you.

You get occasional letters of solicitation, asking you to add to the school's $6 billion endowment. You get invited to pay $7,000 to join annual alumni trips to the Galapagos. You understand the withering reference to Bridgeport, CT in Franzen's new novel. And you receive - and here's the real, honest-to-goodness perk - the Yale Alumni Magazine. Pick it up, flip past the predictable references to the Whiffenpoofs, and there's almost always, in fact, something rather riveting. Perhaps it's a photo of the now-demolished bar in which you spent, well, enough evenings over the pool table to seriously delay progress on the dissertation. Perhaps it's the story about the 81-year-old alumnus who now audits a full load of classes every term, reminding you from miles away of the sheer pleasure of being a student. Or perhaps, as last night, it's the article about a certain Kevin Olusola '11. Interested? Instead of telling, I'll show: you can see him at work here.

Beatbox and cello? The combination's far from a natural one - it's no granola with yogurt - but it seems to work reasonably well. Or, at least, given my current state of mind it feels right. Living with a one-year-old, though, may have altered my sensibility. Suddenly macaroni and cheese for breakfast seems like a grand idea; a gaudy chartreuse shirt with a saccharine text and pictures of lambs matches a pair of tiny striped pants; dippping crackers in juice makes sense. Toddlers offer, in other words, constant mismatches and weird combinations - and so they put you in the mood for some classically inflected OutKast.

Yale teaches; Cleo teaches. As an alum of both, I'm happy to report that occasionally the lesson is comparable.