Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Eucalyptus swags and vanilla beans.

My son doesn't drive. It boils down to some issue about his mother refusing to pay his car insurance after he reached 21, or some such nonsense. They say his mother is a mean one. And he's a student so he doesn't have much money himself. Therefore, he walks and rides buses a lot. It builds character. Well, that's what I keep telling myself whenever I feel tempted to get him a policy. Character. Yes.

Helping our kids build character is hard on us parents. That's why I'm mean.

So anyway, I got up at the crack of dawn today and drove 25 miles to pick him up and take him to college so he could take a final exam. His class met at night but the professor chose 8:00 this morning for the final. If I ever see this professor in a dimly-lit hallway I'm going to tell him what I think about that decision. Most of the students who take night classes, take night classes because they WORK ALL DAY. Duh. A lot of students had to take the morning off from work, or miss the final if that was not possible.

The city buses don't run that early, either. That's why I drove up and got Son.

It wasn't right for the instructor to work a hardship like that on the students.

It wasn't in the syllabus, either. It was just sprung on them at the last minute.

"Oh, by the way, your final exam will be at 8:00 in the morning even though the class met from 6 till 9 on Monday and Wednesday nights. That's 8:00 in the morning. Be there."

I call that rude and unfeeling. And those two words are euphemisms.

I don't know what the prof's rationalization for that lame decision was, but I bet it was selfish. He probably had his plane tickets to Hawaii and didn't want to hang around here those extra evening hours. What're a few screwed students compared to his personal vacation?

There may have been a reasonable explanation but frankly I don't think there could be.

And even if there really was a good reason, I don't care.

It just wasn't right.

Besides, he almost succeeded in messing over my Son. Don't mess with my Son, Professor. I'll kick your sorry behind off Gilligan's Island so fast you won't know what hit you, and I don't CARE if you're the only one who knows how to make a nuclear reactor out of a cocoanut and two banana skins.

But I am trying to be professional about all of this.

Quotations are professional.

I"Creep! Creep! Creep! Creep! Creep!"

Thus sayeth the Beaver, and thus sayeth Mamacita.

Yeah, if you were so smart, how come you couldn't build a big raft and get everybody off that island? But noooo. You were always too busy ogling Mary Ann and making radio knobs out of seashells.

Don't try to deny it. We all knew you had a thing for Mary Ann.

What man didn't?

Ginger was nothing, compared to Mary Ann. Ginger was stupid. TOO stupid. And why did she pack all those dresses for a three-hour-tour? It makes no sense.

And everything else about the show did. . . . .

On my way home, I stopped at an unfamiliar WalMart.

WalMarts are not all alike, you know.

This one was a clunker. It had no aisles, just squares within squares of merchandise. Nothing was near anything that it had something in common with. It was like a big labyrinth, with not even a Minotaur as a goal.

Probably the intent was to force the customer to walk all over the whole store, and possibly purchase things impulsively. Sorry, store-interior-designer, but it doesn't work that way.

When customers have to walk a country mile to find toothpaste after they've found the shampoo and the cheap DVD's, forget it. They're not going to do it. It's easier to walk across the parking lot and get it at K-Mart. K-Mart might not rival WalMart in inventory, but at least what inventory it does have is arranged logically.

Maybe WalMart should hire Martha Stewart. Or at least sublease her.

Martha Stewart. I bet her prison bars are painted in tones of peach, and enhanced by a swag of eucalyptus and cranberries. And her toilet bowl has been draped in grapevines, sprayed with lily of the valley, and accented with cinnamon sticks and vanilla beans.

Funny, Martha Stewart doing all that prison time while so many actual criminals are free to walk around K-Mart and purchase 350-count sheets with her name on them.

Good luck on that big test, Son.

Hey Daughter, thanks for calling me in the middle of the day just to say 'hi.'

I love you both an awful lot. Yes, and more than that.