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.”

That's a good name for it.

It looks like spring is finally going to come to Michigan, which opens the door to many possibilities, not the least of which is the opportunity to enjoy outings that involve driving around more or less aimlessly on back roads to see what we can see. For a detailed description of this activity, see my posting entitled "Sploring" of August 20, 2010.

As I said in that post, we often add scratch-off lottery tickets when sploring, which requires stopping at mom-and-pop stores to buy the tickets and trading in the winners and/or buying more tickets at the next little store.

On one such occasion we ended up mostly north and west our home base, and quite a long way off. We stopped at a convenience store that appeared to be on the outskirts of a town, but we didn't know which one. I waited in the car while my wife went into the store to deal with the lottery tickets. Parked next to me was a pickup truck with an older gentleman at the wheel whose companion had also gone into the store.

Both our windows were down, so I leaned my head out and said to him, "Excuse me. Can you tell me what town this is?"

"This is Lakeview," he said.

I admit I do have a rather shameless tendency to be -- well, a smart ass, and before I could stop myself, I said mildly, "Oh, I'll bet you can see the lake from here."

"Oh, no," he said earnestly, "not from here.  But from town you can."

Good to know. Thank you, sir.

Please? Pretty please?

One time my mother and I were watching a Cubs game on television. When a player made the sign of the cross before stepping into the batter’s box, she said, “Do you think he’s praying for a home run, or that the pitcher doesn’t bean him with the ball?” Maybe both, is what I thought.

Back then only a player who crossed himself revealed he was asking for favors from a higher power.  Nowadays you might see a pitcher remove his cap and bow his head – and sometimes go down on one knee – before taking the mound. Praying he throws lots of strikes, maybe?

And batters, even without an obvious pre-bat prayer, will raise their eyes and point to heaven above when they arrive safely at a base or cross home plate. So, again, is he saying, “Thanks for the base hit,” or is he giving thanks that he didn’t break his arm sliding head-first into the bag?

It is temping to wonder if God takes sides. Can the MLB standings be a reflection of divine intervention?

Well, I kind of doubt it, actually. I don’t think a merciful supreme being could ignore the prayers of Cubs fans for a hundred years before assisting them in winning the 2016 World Series.

Although – the turning point in the Cubs' fortunes came after that 17-minute delay before the start of the 10th inning of Game 7, caused by the sky opening and a deluge falling upon Cleveland.

Hmm.

Reality Check

My mother was in charge of the household budget, and one time she got to thinking it would be nice if there was just a little more money left over after the bills were paid. She thought maybe getting the monthly house payment lowered might help, so she called the bank that held the mortgage. She was connected to a loan office who told her that it might be  possible to refinance the loan.

“I’d like to understand your situation,” he said.  “Are you carrying large balances on credit cards?”

“No, we don’t have any credit cards.”

“Are you making payments for a lot of things you bought on credit?"

“Just our car,” she said.

“Are you behind on any payments?”

“No.”

“Do you have a lot of medical bills?”

“No.”

“Do you have kids in college?”

“No.”

Sounding a little irked, he said “Well, what’s your problem, lady?”

“I guess I don’t have one,” she said, then thanked him and hung up.

Very Like Schenectady

I’ve lately been mulling over figures of speech, of which there are myriad types. The ones most of us remember from our high school English classes are the very common simile and metaphor.

The distinction is the presence or absence of comparison words like “like” or “as” since simile says one thing is similar to another:  The sun was like a big orange ball.

Metaphor tells us one thing actually is another: The sun was a big orange ball.

Where I started to bog down in my mulling was in the various subspecies of metaphor, two of the most common of which are metonymy and synecdoche.

A metonym is a word or phrase that substitutes for another, as in, “There was no comment from the White House,” where the building stands in for the President.

On the other hand, a synecdoche represents something by one characteristic of it, such as calling a car “wheels.”  One source I consulted gave as an example of synecdoche the use of “long hair” for hippie.

That brings me to my original point, which I admit was a long time coming.  When I was young – well, before the Beatles, anyway – “long hair” didn’t mean hippie, it was associated with classical music, probably because of the longish and often untidy heads of hair seen in portraits of famous composers of the past and one or two eccentric orchestra conductors of the present.

It was that meaning that frequently caused my father to deliver the indirect referential synecdochic locution of, “I think I’ll get a hair cut.  It’s cheaper than a violin.”

(I hope that was worth waiting for.)