The following article attempts to explain why I feel like a fish out of water in Nummit. Interspersed throughout are ridiculous little fragments representing my internal monologue:

Perhaps you, dear reader, have experienced the horrors that occur when you find yourself in an environment that is not within your social circle.

I cannot properly elucidate why I get remarkably anxious every time I step into Nummit. Part of it has to do with the fact that last year I didn’t go at all, so I didn’t establish myself as a “Nummit guy.” It’s like deciding to wear jeans after a lifetime of not wearing jeans. Because of this, I feel like everybody can sense that I’m not a Nummit guy, that I’m trying to blend into a completely hostile environment. This results in a kind of absurd mental commentary that is as follows: They can smell your fraudulence and that you don’t belong. They can see it on your face. What are you wearing? They don’t just smell your fraudulence they can see it. You need to get out. I feel like I have no right to be there.

The scariest part is, undoubtedly, ordering. It does kind of seem like everybody who frequents Nummit has a relatively complex, very established order that they adhere to with an almost religious zeal. Being agnostic (and uncertain about my order) brings about an absolute neurosis whenever I come face to face with the smiling barista. 

You approach the counter. Everything is sweating. The barista feels your fraudulence and does not take pity. What does a regular get? Your order will reinforce your fraudulence. The drinks come out from behind the counter and they are filled with blood. Disembodied heads float to the counter to acquire their drinks filled with blood. 

Obviously, there are no disembodied heads and there is no blood. Still, a central part of my Nummit paranoia is this feeling that my order will either be stupid and trite or that it will, in its attempt to not be trite, be so ridiculously out of character that whoever is taking my order will say something like, “Sören? You drink matcha?” and then I’ll have to unconvincingly say something like, “Why yes of course I drink matcha! I love matcha,” even though I didn’t even know what matcha was until three weeks ago when I asked a good friend why her drink was all green. 

Nummit is not a closed organization. In fact, it’s the opposite of exclusive. It’s actually quite welcoming. The greenish hue coupled with the windows that let in just the right amount of light give the space a really pleasant ambience. Still, there are Nummit people—the regulars—and non-regulars: people who don’t have a predetermined order, people who hope they can digest the menu fast enough to spit out an order when it’s their turn, people who only find themselves in Nummit if they’re doing a group project with people who enjoy doing group projects in Nummit. As I have gotten to know more and more people at Davidson, I have found myself in Nummit more often than I’d ever thought I would be, and every time it has been an experience of abject terror. 

As the fragmentary dispatches from my consciousness demonstrate, I experience a profound amount of social anxiety that is occasionally supplemented by these absurd Lynchian hallucinations in Nummit. Indeed, something is happening in Nummit, but I don’t know what it is. I’m not in on it. There’s an entire vocabulary, an essence of being that Nummit regulars inherently possesses that is totally foreign to me. I have no idea if this is a unique 

experience or if there is a silent cohort of people who also feel this way. Please email me if you also face this affliction. 

The truth is, however, that none of this is real. The norms that I imagine exist in Nummit, which I’m supposedly ignorant of, are not real. The baristas are very nice. Oftentimes they are my classmates. The other people in Nummit don’t even notice me; they cannot actually sense my fraudulence. The adage that you will be way less concerned with what others think of you when you realize how seldom they do rings true. Nummit is indeed a terrifying place, but it’s all a fiction that lives in my head.

In reality, Nummit is green, warm and welcoming. One day, I will be comfortable within its walls. I humbly request everyone’s assistance in this endeavor. Maybe I will even have an order.

Sören Potthoff ‘27 is an English major from Chapel Hill, NC and can be reached for comment at [email protected].