Keep 'em coming.

Okay, so here I am, one of, if not the most fundamentally rotten person on the face of the earth. I am constantly grouchy, I take advantage of others, I piss people off on purpose, I kick dogs, I scare little children, and I wish everybody else on this planet would leave me alone and/or drop dead.

Then one day while logged in to Facebook on my tablet, I see a posting by some do-gooder that shows a pretty picture of a sunset, or a field with butterflies, or some such equally wholesome image over which in large, fancy lettering is superimposed some cocked-up bit of moralizing sophistry, such as, “He who plants kindness gathers love."

And all at once, without warning, out of the blue, in a sudden a fit of self-awareness, I realize the awful truth -- I am not kind.

So I instantly stop being a bitch and become a kind person for the rest of my life.

Because I read that homey little homily on Facebook.

Right.

Dorm Food

Today’s episode of “The Pioneer Woman” was all about what Ree Drummond called “dorm food.” What she meant by that was how your average college student could create meals and snacks right in his or her very own dorm room, assuming that dorm room comes with a refrigerator and a microwave oven.

When I was a college student living in a dormitory (in 1965), “dorm food” meant the cafeteria fare they slapped onto our trays as we passed down the chow line in the dining hall. We had special names for some of the things we were served, like Grilled Grease and Hockey Puck on a Bun. There was also a particularly offensive stew we called Gravy Train.

There was no fridge and no nuker in my dorm room -- no way to keep anything cold, and if you wanted hot water, you either had to settle for what came out of the hot-water tap in the community bathroom down the hall, or take a chance of electrocuting yourself with one of those little immersion water heaters.

My “dorm food” consisted of a jar of peanut butter and a box of saltines. In winter I could provide a quick breakfast for myself by putting one package from a box of Pop-Tarts on the radiator while I got showered and dressed, which I would then eat on my way to class.

Now who's a Pioneer Woman?

Mystery Solved

On a Sunday six years ago (January 15, 2012) I posted comments about the names of some of my grade-school teachers. You can go back and read the whole thing if you like, but the part I want to follow up on is this:

And then there is the mystery of Miss Lauschke.  She was my first-grade teacher, and she left us for a week or so toward the end of the school year to get married. When she came back, she told us she had a new name, so it was inappropriate for us to call her Miss Lauschke and incorrect to call her Mrs. Lauschke, but she was afraid her new last name would be hard for us to pronounce (like Lauschke was a bargain?) and since there was only a week or so left of school, she decided we could just call her Mrs. Anna.  I assumed at the time and have believed ever since that Anna was her first name.

Then today, nearly 60 years later, I see on that report card, where it says Name of Teacher, she has written Corinne Lauschke.

So, who the hell was Anna? 

Well, I now have the whole story, and I blame my earlier mistake on having been six years old at the time. It seems I misunderstood what she told us about her new name and also what her new name was.

Through the miracle my subscription to ancestry.com, I have discovered that Corinne Lauschke was married on April 25, 1953, to one Paul Anda.

She told us to call her Mrs. Anda, not Mrs. Anna.

I should go back and check those report cards to see what grades I got in “listens well.”