Thanks, But No Thanks

It's Mother's Day. I am SO happy that my kids did not get me this:

 Or this:

 Or this:

 

Sure, I had a pair of toe-socks back in the day. But I draw the line at toe-shoes. And what's with the name, anyway? FiveFINGERS? Was the name FiveTOES already taken? Don't the toe holes just give you more contact area to form blisters?

Goodbye, being taken seriously. Hello, plantar fasciitis! It looks like the next big trend. For now.

I didn't even LIKE my toe-socks.

Small Town Celebrity

I am a small town celebrity. My superstar status is not related to a particular talent or event. My notoriety does not stem from any abominable deed. Yet I am recognized county-wide as a local bigwig.

My claim to fame is my career of educating the citizens of tomorrow. Think about it. If a teacher lands a job at the tender age of twenty-two, and forges ahead until retirement at fifty-two, that teacher has touched the lives of approximately 3600-5400 students. It depends on the size of the school district. The low number assumes a class size of twenty students per class period, and the high number represents thirty students per class period. Either way you look at it, that's the population of a town around these parts.

It's a bit disconcerting to hear your name called out on a parking lot. Then comes the guilt-inducing, "Don't you remember me?" Sure, the face looks familiar. It's the list of 5400 possible names to go with it that presents the problem. The accosters are unfailingly, overwhelmingly, polite. They give the name, and it all comes back. Like yesterday.

Even so, I can't help but feel remorse for not shouting out the right name from the get-go. And I'm still over a thousand faces away from retirement.

The Curious Incident of the Rabbel-Squirrit

Driving 20 mph down a tree-lined, residential street this afternoon, I spied a curious sight.

A critter ran across the road into a yard. I am no stranger to critters. I live in the country, by cracky! I've been raised amongst the varmints. I've sunk my teeth into plenty of rabbits and squirrels and quail. I know quail. I've sold original pencil drawings of quail. This, my friends, was no quail.

My mind told me it was no rabbit or squirrel, either. It was that gray-white mottled fur common to both rabbits and squirrels. It did not hop, nor did it dart in a twitchy, stop-and-start manner. It sort of bounded in a straight line across a yard to a tree. Which it made no attempt to scale. Or to run around and play peek-a-boo. It sat on all fours, not on its haunches. Now here's the weird part: it had neither a bushy tail nor long ears.

This critter was either a rabbit with no ears, or a squirrel with no tail. It was the PAT of the animal world. You remember Pat. The ambiguous SNL character who did not carry money in a purse or wallet, but in a sports sack. Who chose not to watch the Giants/Forty-Niners game or Murphy Brown, but instead rented the movie Tootsie. Who had a significant other named Chris. I am afraid to see the significant other of this creepy yard critter. It might have a bushy tail and long ears.

My scientific background points me in the direction of a squirrel with no tail. Because it's easier to get a tail lopped off by accident than to lose both ears.

Backroads Miz Manners is Reluctant to Stir the Pot

I am faced with a delicate dilemma.

When, in the course of lunchtime events, it becomes necessary for some people to dissolve culinary bands which have connected them with another...a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

How do you tell an adult that he is chewing with his mouth open? Which, even in Missouri, is frowned upon in polite society. Not just chewing with his mouth open, but rolling the food around and around his tongue like a human cow with a hamburger cud. Making noises like a bulldog trying to lick peanut butter off the roof of his mouth. All the while, the half-masticated food protrudes/recedes, dancing a delicate ballet that mesmerizes the captive audience. They cannot bear to look, yet can't look away, lest a second of inattention enable the expanding blob of foodstuff to succumb to gravity, in a dramatic, slow-motion swan dive onto the white formica.

My dining companions pretend that this chomping falls within the norm of mealtime etiquette. Would they not tell a man his fly was open? Inform a lady that a booger dangles from her nostril. Notify a hirsute fellow when crumbs collect in his beard? Apprise Julia Sugarbaker when she has a big ol' bird perched on her head? I find this non-notification to be cruel and unusual.

My sixteen-year-old son, Genius, has had the experience of repasting with the oblivious offender. He and his cronies cringed in horror, but did nothing to resolve the issue. It's a class concern. Students do not correct their superiors. Genius was hoping that I would do the dirty deed.

"You mean you guys don't tell him? How can you sit there every day and watch that? It's sickening. We all sat at a different table on our trip, and left him and the other sponsor at a table for two, like a date. If one of us at our school lunch table did that, we would not let him get away with it. We would make fun of him every day until he stopped."

I can't do it. I cannot correct another adult's table manners. It's not like we could put a bottle of Scope in his mailbox for bad breath. Perhaps we could model correct behavior. All of us take a bite at the same time, chew with our lips clenched together, moaning "mmmm" like the grub is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I'm open to suggestions.

Covert Cat-Bombings Continue

Every evening when I pull into the garage, after an extended shift toiling away in the kid mines, I am greeted by the same occurrence. Cat bombs.

You'd think that I would have developed a thick skin, a tough outer shell, an unflinching, stoic, demeanor in response to this daily auditory assault. I have not. One minute, I'm chatting with The Pony, who insists on riding in the passenger seat behind me, even though the shotgun seat is empty. Like he has a personal chauffeur. Chatting insouciantly, chortling, perhaps, at The Pony's misadventures, when THUD! A cat thumps onto the roof of my Tahoe from the Machu Picchu-like heights of the garage rafters. My nerves, shredded from a long day of inflicting my will upon recalcitrant adolescents, jangle and jitter in a final hurrah. I flinch.

They appear to own the place, these cats. Two were hand-chosen as pets, before they were even old enough to sever the apron strings. The other three were gifts. Gifts of pet-abandoners who haunt rural roads, inflicting sorrow and guilt upon backwoods denizens who feel obliged to take in the wretched refuse of your teeming kennels. Or who at least feel enough compassion to assure their crying children that yes, the kitties can come home with us so they won't starve to death or be eaten by wild animals.

What they don't explain is that the kitties must be wormed, and have shots, and undergo special operations so they won't make more kitties. And five years later, the kitties will have taken over the grounds, scale the screens of the living room window in attempts to reach the summit of Mount Cedar Home, dash into the house if they see a sliver of an opening, caterwaul at 3:00 a.m. right outside the bedroom french doors, eat like they are carb-loading for a marathon 24/7, and terrorize the actual pet cats until they are fuzzy balls of nerves who appear to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Numerous requests to cease the cat-bombing have gone unanswered. 

A Little Science Humor

Today my classes read and discussed Science World magazine. One of the articles was about William Trubridge, who set a world record for diving to a depth of over 300 feet on one breath.

We'll forgive the young lass who inquired as to whether Mr. Trubridge took his breath before he dove under, or at the bottom of the 300-foot dive. Because even though most people understand that you must take a breath, which is air, before you go underwater, as it is hard to survive a lungful of the liquid dihydrogen monoxide, the article did not specify precisely where Mr. Trubridge inhaled. So it was an honest question, not meant to sidetrack those of us wise in the ways of water and the respiratory system.

Talk turned to the nature of the record-setting dive. How Mr. Trubridge had to get back to the surface to inhale, so he had to budget his time carefully, or be faced with a frantic rush from the hydrosphere back to the atmosphere. Lass Two announced authoritatively,

"Yeah. He has to be careful, because if divers come up too fast, they get the runs."

Let the record show that several classmates enlightened her on the difference between the runs and the bends.

May Day Momisms

May 1st. It's the day that my mother used to mark the beginning of barefoot season. It didn't matter if the temperature rose to eighty degrees on April 30. Shoes had to be worn until May 1st.

Among the other momisms:


*Always wash your feet before bed. (I'm perpetuating the hillbilly stereotype for all of rural Missouri, it seems.)

*When you take a bath, it is NOT acceptable to start at the feet and work your way up for a change. Well, you don't want to know who came up with this brilliant idea, but you can see how bragging about the new bathtime routine backfired.

*The word fart will never be mentioned in this house (unspoken rule). If one smelt it and wished to inquire as to who dealt it, the proper way to address the situation was: "Does somebody have to go to the bathroom." Thank goodness she had two girls and no boys, because I can imagine my imaginary brother piping up, 'No, I only had to FART!'

*Don't slam the mustard bottle down on the table. Enacted after my sister, who doesn't even eat mustard, shot a bright yellow geyser onto the ceiling of the kitchen.

*Eat everything on your plate before you get up from the table. Guess what? If you don't like the canned peas when they're served to you at 5:00 p.m., you really won't like cold canned peas in the dark at 9:00 p.m.

I realize I've left out the clean underwear in case of an accident, and what if your face froze like that, and if all of your friends jumped off a bridge would you jump off, too. I have time constraints, you know.