Stop, Shop, Surrender

We live in an age of crumbling faiths. Everywhere I look, beliefs are battered and belittled – belief in God, belief in human goodness, belief in public transportation. Even faith in our presidential candidates is wavering – just today I received an email informing me that my beloved Barack Obama (and I quote), “IS a muslim and IS a racist and this is a fulfillment of the 911 threat that was just the beginning.” My God, why hast thou forsaken me (and my preferred political candidate)?

Amidst these trying times, I am happy to say that this evening, I experienced a restoration of faith in one of the most fundamental institutions of modern society: the grocery store.

First of all, in an era when the echoes of far-off bombs and gunfire resonate through my withered conscience, I long for the sweet, serene sounds of simpler times. Tonight, while shopping for shallots, I find myself inexplicably drawn to the vegetable and fruit section. There, enraptured in an alternate universe, I nuzzle the organic carrots as a mechanized Mother Nature sprays a soft mist of hygienic H20 and serenades her vegetative wards with midi thunder sounds. That’s right – in today’s supermarkets, tumultuous audio storms are invoked for the benefit of the zucchini and beets. Oh ye, bard of broccoli, let thine sweet symphony seduce my singed senses!

After I satiate my tastes in fresh produce, I move on to the rest of my grocery list. Alas, there is no crème fraîche. But I eschew bitterness in lieu of tolerant understanding. Let the plebeians devour their Half and Half; I will not lose heart! (There is no lemon thyme, either, and no halibut. Even the “Ethnic Foods” aisle is a bust. Grocerial segregation? Nay – not at Stop & Shop, surely. But I digress.)

At long last, I clothe myself in pretenses of economic security and prepare to pay for my indulgences. Because of my deep-seated inability to relinquish control, I select the self check-out line. As it turns out, my choice is richly rewarded.

There is a brilliant feature on the “do it yourself” checkout lines involving an automated voice. If you have, say, neglected to weigh and catalog your fruits in the produce section, you are given a second chance at checkout. The automated voice extends an olive branch of mercy and understanding. First you must enter the product number, and then, as if by magic, the oracle speaks. Ever the stereotypical woman, she wants to communicate with you.

“Please place your muffins on the belt,” the voice chides in monotone, like a knowing lover. “Place your muffins on the belt.”

So I place my muffins on the belt. Then the mysterious voice gets even more familiar.

“How many bananas do you have?” Um, one. One banana. “Please place your banana on the belt.”

Okay. As I nervously place my banana on the belt, I can’t help but eavesdrop on the chorus of neighboring commands.

“Please place your avocado on the belt.”

“Please place your melons on the belt.”

“How many kiwis do you have? Please place your kiwis on the belt.”

Suddenly, I am seized by an uncontrollable fit of laughter. I cannot contain myself – I am possessed by the thought of countless adjacent customers placing their bananas, muffins, melons, and god knows what else on the belt. It’s ridiculous. This virtual woman has no shame.

As I roll my cart out into the parking lot, I am still chuckling. I hardly notice the kiwi man’s truck as it pulls up beside me.

“Hey, muffin girl,” he calls. I look up mid-chortle. “Can I have your number?” he drawls out his window.

I think he’s drunk, but I’m in too good a mood to care. I cheerily explain that I don’t do dates, but thanks anyway.

He responds in a tangled mass of supplication, but I only catch the words “nicest,” “sex,” and “construction.” God only knows what that means.

I wave, and he drives away. I unload my groceries – now broadcast to the world – and keep giggling as I shift into first gear.

Thank you, Stop & Shop, for renewing my faith in humanity. And if the offer still stands…my muffins are yours for the taking.

Dental Degradation on Dante, Degreed

Need a humility check? A trip to the dentist ought to do the trick.

This week at the dentist's office, I had one cavity filled. I also had my self-confidence gutted. And my insurance paid for both!

As if it isn't embarrassing enough just sitting in a chair with your mouth pried open, staring up at painfully bright fluorescent lighting with a bib over your chest, they actually try to talk to you, as if they care about your emotional comfort level in addition to your tooth decay. Naturally, when the friendly dental hygienist attempts to make small talk, you're left with very limited response options. As a result, the conversation goes something like this:

"Kind of warm out today, huh?"

"AAAAAAAH."

"With the sun coming in through those windows, it's actually hot in here!"

"AAAA-AAHHHH."

"Can't believe I'm wearing a sweater."

"AAAAA AAAAA-AAHHHH."

"What do you think of the war?"

"AAAAAAAAH-AAAAAAAAH AAAAAH AH AH AAAAAH!"

"I'm gay."

"AAAAAHHH?"

"Mind if I fondle your canines?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH."

It doesn't really matter what she says -- you'd still be left with one vowel sound to cover a necessarily wide range of emotion.

There's also a coded system of language, created by dentists and dental hygienists as a way of communicating with one another while their patients remain prostrate and mystified. This time, I listened extra carefully, trying to decode it. At a few points, I succeeded, and I can now offer these insights into the highly technical language of the elite dentistati clan.

When the dentist says, "I don't want to argue with you, but we normally do amalgam metal and typically advise against resin fillings," what he is trying to say is, "You shallow, frivolous idiot. Buck up, and get some friggin' silver in your mouth."

When the dentist says "Need a little more retraction" to the hygienist, what he is really saying is, "The patient is tonguing my hand again. It's disgusting. Please intervene."

When the dentist says, "Your cheek and tongue should feel very numb. Do you feel like you have a fat lip?" your answer should be, "Yeth." If you answer with a prim and proper "Yes, sir," congratulations: you can still pronounce your S's! This is going to hurt like hell.

And when the dentist begins to drill into your tooth but stops when you arch your back and dig your nails into the plastic seat covering, at which point he says, "Let's numb you up a little more," what he means is, "I understand you just experienced a sensation something like hot lava beset with prickly pears being poured into your gums. Please don't sue me. Why don't we pump some more Novocain into your face?"

Eventually they'd injected so much Novocain into my general facial region that my right eye was drooping. I came into that office a proud, sentient member of society. I left a semi-Quasimodo with one lazy eye, trying not to drool on myself as I sputtered out travesties of language like "Thankth tho muth. I really apprethiate it. Thee you thith Thurthday?"

On the way out, I noticed a fairly good-looking boy (in my general age range! in Wellfleet! in WINTER!) in the waiting room. Hoping that some semblance of inner beauty would shine through the completely numb right half of my face, I attempted a flirtatious (albeit cockeyed) grin. Then, as I left, I proceeded to close the office door with my bootlace still inside it, pulling me back with a jolt before catapulting my body off the front steps.

And... there went the remaining sliver of my pride.

Never mind that I have eight more cavities in my mouth. I don't think I can suffer another dentist appointment -- mind, body, or soul -- for a long time.

Cupid Gone Awry

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and inspired by a recent trend, I am pleased to present:


WAYS NOT TO HIT ON SOMEONE
by Bree Barton


Exhibit A
“Ike”

I met "Ike" at a benefit where a local artist was raising money for her work in Haiti. As I perused exquisite silk scarves and photographs of beautiful big-eyed Haitians, big-eyed Ike perused my ass. I could feel his gaze boring into me like a magnifying glass poised over a voluptuous ant. When I looked up, we made awkward eye contact from across the room. This was all Ike needed: like a flash of lightning he was off, past the silent auction sheets and Diri ak Pwa and immediately by my side. He struck up a conversation, and I idly chatted back, unaware that I had just tacitly agreed to relinquish the next two hours of my life.

At one point during our two-hour conversation – not sure if it was before or after he astutely pointed out the pink lace on my bra – Ike fed me what seemed to be a genuine compliment.

“You know what? You’re funny.”

He said this as if it were shocking that a woman might actually be, you know, funny. As in, humorous. As in, a sayer of witty things.

“Well you know, I was a standup comic,” I said jokingly.

“Yeah, right,” Ike leered. “You’re not that funny.”

Thank you, Assface.

Ike didn’t seem to think this was at all insulting, and I was amused enough to keep the conversation going. Over the course of the next hour, Ike kept insisting we had a future together. “I really think we could have a relationship,” he said, and I kept trying to explain that I had no interest in having a relationship with him, now or ever. But because I could see where the conversation was going and I’m not very good at saying no, I decided to preempt the inevitable digit-request by offering them up myself.

“I know you’re going to ask for my number,” I said, “so here it is. You can call, but I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to answer. If you leave a message, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll return it. But don’t worry: I’ll probably feel guilty about not getting back to you. Just so you know.”

Ike smirked. I could tell from his expression that he was convinced I was only playing hard to get. After all, I’d just given him my number; that must mean I wanted him to call. Most important, he liked my ass and my hair! Obviously, we had an inevitable future together.

Yeah, right. I’m not that stupid.

As promised, when Ike called, I didn’t answer. When I picked up his voicemail, I didn’t feel that guilty, either. I didn’t return the call.

But Ike wasn’t giving up so easily. A few days later, he sent me a text message.

“Would love to see ur smile again” the text said. How sweet, I thought, and went about smiling in the privacy and sanctity of my own home.

A few days later, I received another text.

“Wanna make out later?”

Ike was obviously changing tactics, probably in an attempt to be playful. Still, a little creepy. I didn’t respond.

The third and final text came a few days after that.

“Maybe this will work. Lets have sex tnite. Is 11 good?”

JESUS CHRIST.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t respond. I haven’t heard from him since. What an alarming progression of intent: smiles, then French kissing, then sex, all in a one-sided textual conversation. And this from a self-proclaimed “hopeless romantic.” I shudder to think what the unromantics are like.


Exhibit B
The Deputy Shellfish Constable

This Monday I made the trek to Provincetown to attend the weekly Open Mic Night at Mew’s Cafe. The temperature was around 16 and the wind chill made it feel like 9 degrees, possibly the coldest weather I’ve ever experienced. Mapquest told me that the bar was located at 329 Commercial St.; I parked my car around the 180 block, thinking that it would be an easy minute’s walk. After two blocks, I had just made it to the 200’s and had lost feeling in three toes. Realizing I wasn’t going to make it, I abandoned the plan, sheepishly fled back to my car, and drove to 329 Commercial like the thin-skinned Texan I am.

When I got to Mew’s, the bar was hopping. I sat down at the table closest to the stage with an excellent Kenyan beer and, through avid toe-tapping, slowly regained feeling in my toes. After about half an hour I got up to go the bathroom where I stood for several minutes in glorious sun worship, face uplifted, basking in the thrilling warmth of the heater affixed to the ceiling.

On my way back to the table, I stopped by the bar to get another drink.

A man in a poncho swung out in front of me. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, and suddenly a Tusker beer with a fresh glass magically appeared from within the folds of his poncho.

“I didn’t order another beer,” I answered, wondering why he was dressed differently than the other servers.

“I know, I said I’m sorry I’m late.”

Clearly we weren’t understanding each other. He wasn’t late; he was early. I hadn’t ordered another beer at all. And how’d he know I was going to get another Tusker?

“How’d you know I wasn’t going to order something different?” I asked.

He looked confused. “You over there?” He pointed at my table.

I nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said, and began walking. Only then did I realize that he wasn’t actually a server at all; he was a bar patron who had generously offered me a drink and whom I had proceeded to interrogate. I am an awkward human being, I thought to myself. Is it obvious I don’t often go to bars?

At my table we screamed our introductions, trying to make ourselves heard over the guitar blaring twelve inches away. “I’m BREE!” I said. “Thank YOU for the DRINK!”

“I’m the DEPUTY SHELLFISH CONSTABLE of WELLFLEET!” he said. “It’s the COOLEST JOB EVER!”

I didn’t press.

Right about then, the band took a breather between songs. In the ensuing quiet, I took the opportunity to tell my new companion that I, too, lived in Wellfleet.

“Another Wellfleetian!” he exclaimed. “Whereabouts?”

“Near the library,” I said.

“Chequessett Neck Road,” he said softly. And then, leaning forward, he whispered my exact street address.

You could have heard my heart stop.

“Ummm…yes, that’s my address. How do you…??”

At that moment, several thoughts were racing through my head. The Deputy Shellfish Constable is going to kill me, I thought. He’s been stalking me for weeks. He sits in front of my window at all hours of the night while I sit, vulnerable and illuminated, Googling “Heath Ledger Mary Kate scandal!” at 1:30 am. He’s planned the whole thing out: he followed me here tonight and is going to get me drunk on Tuskers, then rape and murder me in some kinky fashion using crab claws and melted butter. Afterwards he’ll chop me up and toss me into an abandoned boat with the shellfish —not the law-abiding ones, but those little shelled bastards that make it damn near impossible for the Constable to keep the peace.

As it turns out, my fears were unwarranted. The Deputy Shellfish Constable had simply guessed my correct address because he had once lived in the adjacent studio apartment himself. That explained his uncanny prescience. Still, it’s a little unnerving to sit down with a total stranger and have him tell you precisely where you live.


Exhibit C

Forget Exhibit C. I can’t take any more. Romance is overrated. After all, the original St. Valentine was imprisoned, tortured, and beheaded. Modern dating seems equally perilous. I think I’ll pass, thanks.

Me + a bottle of wine = a good Valentine’s Day.

Christmas at the Centennial

As a construction, the "Centennial" is a glorious thing. As defined by Webster, a Centennial is a momentous celebration, the anniversary of some event that took place one hundred years before. Though inevitably everyone who was present at the original event is now dead, the modern participants in the Centennial are united in the common (albeit hazy) conviction that the original event was important; so important, in fact, that it deserves to be not only remembered, but lauded with great fervor. Centennials herald a century of work, growth, and progress, one hundred years of love, life, and the metric system, which grants special credence to numbers like "100." And what could be better than a Centennial Christmas? A Christmas at the Centennial offers the perfect union of holiday tradition and long-standing legacy, a way to recognize where we came from as it informs where we stand today.

Which, if you were me on Christmas Eve, was at the liquor store.



I've never experienced anything quite like Christmas at the Centennial. For one thing, at 6 pm on Christmas Eve, everything is sparsely populated at best, totally desolate at worst. The grocery store was a dead zone, Jamba Juice was eerily devoid of uniformed private school kids, and even the yuppies at Whole Foods were showing signs of slowing down. The Centennial, on the other hand, was packed. Two policemen were stationed outside, directing traffic in the parking lot. Is it just the volume they're monitoring? I wondered. Or are they afraid some crazed Centennial shopper won't be able to keep himself from ripping the cork out of his merry before he's left the parking lot?

Inside the Centennial, the crowd was intense. People liquor-browsed and debated with one another over what to buy. Jack or Wild Turkey? Kahlua or Godiva White Chocolate liquer? Bud, Bud Lite, a beer that spells "light" correctly, or a 6-pack of Coors Lt bottles that cleverly mask the shitbeer by turning blue? But wait — doesn't Michelob ULTRA [sic] have less calories? Decisions, decisions.

If you listened closely enough, you could practically hear the unasked questions that shaped the lively in-store buzz. What liquor's best for spiking eggnog? Is spiced rum a good holiday choice? Could Jager and Absinthe be mixed as a festive layer shot? And the most potent question, one that hung in the air forming a sort of underlying current that united all the Centennial shoppers in a common goal: What is the most potent liquor that will allow me to deal with all my extended family on Christmas without them knowing that I've had to resort to liquor to deal with them?

When I approached the checkout counter with my bottle of wine, someone had just broken a bottle of something else, and the pungent smell of tequila wafted through the air. A haggard employee attempted to mop it up, merely spreading the sickeningly sweet perfume throughout the store. Who needs Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh? Give them to Jesus: I’ll take my Jose Cuervo, please. No lime or salt required — just a rag to mop it off the floor, and a shot glass to ring the rag into. There’s the real way to ring in the holiday season. That's how we do things in Texas.

Once I left the store, I waved jollily to the policeman, waltzed across the parking lot to my car, stowed my wine, and went right back inside the Centennial.

This time I decided to go for a bit of Irish cream. However, always the penny-pincher, I selected a bottle of Saint Brendan’s, the knockoff version of Bailey’s for cheap bastards. For four dollars less, you get a seductively shaped bottle and stuff that tastes more or less the same. I continued to call it Bailey’s throughout the evening, which is akin to buying the knockoff brand of facial tissues and proceeding to call them “Kleenex.” Who doesn’t do it? And who the hell’s heard of Saint Brendan anyway? More important: did Saint Brendan — whoever he was — ever imagine that his sainthood would be remembered solely in conjunction with a liquor that people buy when they really wish they were buying Bailey’s but don’t want to spend the extra four bucks? To add insult to injury, he doesn’t even get remembered at all when people like me go around claiming to be drinking Bailey’s. Poor saintly soul.

For my second alcoholic purchase of the evening, I used a different checkout counter. I didn’t want people getting ideas. And since I’d be going to a party where lugging a bottle of Saint Brendan’s around all night might make me conspicuous, I asked for a flask.

“Them plastic one's all we got,” the man said, pointing to a stack of what looked like misshapen potatoes posing as plastic pill bottles.

I took one. After all, it's the holidays, and my garter was lonely.

Oh, Brendan the Bold. How you’ve carried me to the Isle of the Blessed.

Nothing like Christmas at the Centennial to raise one’s spirits.

Giving Birth to Shine Dropular

Sometimes I have problems with words. It’s not so much the words themselves that cause me grief, but the fact that certain phrases become almost intrusive, aggressively butting into my consciousness at the most inappropriate of times. Or even more disturbing, in my hour of need, the right words, the truest specimens of that magic moment where vowels and consonants converge, desert me. They leave me cold, lonely, and – the greatest of all possible evils – inarticulate.

Take, for example, my current ghostwriting project. I’m revising a book written for pregnant women. This particular book is aimed toward women who haven’t been pregnant before and therefore don’t quite know what to expect. The book is conveniently broken into three parts corresponding to the three trimesters of pregnancy, each part offering relevant information for that particular period. As I’m the one responsible for restructuring the book along such a timeline, it was up to me to come up with appropriate subtitles for each part.

The first trimester wasn’t hard.

First Trimester:
“The Adventure Begins”

It seemed to work – it’s simple enough, and yet has that boisterous, exotic appeal. It’s an adventure! And it’s beginning! Isn’t that enough to excite most newly minted pregnant women?

The second trimester subtitle proved a little trickier. I tinkered around with several options.

“The Next Step”

“The Adventure Unfolds”

“The Journey Continues”

It was starting to sound like a sequel to some poorly acted B-movie, so I dropped the Pilgrim’s Progress metaphor and went with a little literary pizzazz instead.

Second Trimester:
“The Growing Glow”

When in doubt, pair alliteration and assonance. Corny? Decidedly. At least it’s better than “The Bumping Hump.”

But it’s the blasted third trimester that has plagued me with the most worrisome quandaries. It’s the third subtitle, so of course it must naturally exceed the other two in wit and sparkle. But how do you sum up the last trimester of a pregnancy? For some reason, these aphorisms keep popping into my head:

“The End is in Sight”

“Your Final Days”

“The Beginning of the End”

“The Last Leg”

“The End is Near”

It suddenly occurred to me that none of these really correspond to the third trimester of pregnancy at all. On the contrary, they correspond to precisely two situations: either someone is dying, or the second coming of christ is at hand. No matter how I cast it, the third trimester subtitle sounds like something scrawled on a sign predicting the Apocalypse. Somehow, “The End is Near” doesn’t bode well for women about to have their first child.

I toyed with other ideas.

“Climax is Nigh”?

Too sexual.

“The Denouement”?

Too esoteric.

“Wrapping It Up”?

Possibly irreverent.

“Tying It Up”?

I like the allusion to the umbilical cord – it might as well be “Tying It Up, Cutting It Off” – but it doesn’t quite have that loving touch.

I am open to suggestions. As a word person, I hate not being able to find the right ones.

All this talk of words reminds me: during a recent haircut, I was delighted to discover that a word I once thought was obsolete still exists actively and happily in the vernacular.

I’ll set the scene.

The haircut was over, and the young girl was putting the finishing touches on the blow dry. She reached over for a fingerful of some gobby stuff and started applying it energetically to my hair.

“What’s that?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Oh, it’s Shine Drops,” she said eagerly.



“Shine Drops? Never heard of them,” I said, my complete cluelessness about all-things-hair shining through.

“They’re great,” she said, smiling. “They make your hair so light and shiny! I don’t know if you use any product” … to which I shook my head … “but if you used any, I’d pick Shine Drops.”

And then, without a trace of sarcasm, she added, “All the popular people like them.”

I must have grinned for half an hour. How fabulous. I thought the word “popular” died out in high school. But thank god, there are still popular people, and they’re out there somewhere using Shine Drops.

New idea for the third trimester:

“Shine Drops Make You Popular!

And good luck giving birth.”

Incidents in the Life of Bree

Snippets from the last three days:

1.

I was driving down I75 (again) when I saw a large white delivery truck ahead of me. I couldn’t make out the words on the side, but from a tall and sturdy pipe a kind of translucent blue powder floated mystically into the air. The powder intrigued me. It was an eerie shade of blue, not unlike the pervasive blue of most suburban living rooms after 6 pm when the magic of primetime casts an unbreakable spell over all of western civilization. But this powder was almost gaseous, iridescent and electric. I envisioned it blanketing the highway as I leapt from my car and reveled in the shimmering stuff, letting it coat my arms and cheeks like feather dust, opening my mouth to find the powder sweet and dry like so many snowflakes.

When I approached the truck, the big letters on the side became visible. They read:

BATESVILLE CASKET COMPANY
Committed to the Dignity of Life.

For ten minutes, all I could think about were somebody’s dignified blue ashes wafting across I75, and how to undertake the dignified process of wiping people-particle off my car hood.


2.

My 8-year-old sister has to write out sentences for each of her spelling words. This usually results in sentences like “The cat is black” and “That is a big boat.” Yesterday she was working on words with the “igh” sound, and the first sentence went like this:

“The girl is high.”

She found nothing funny about this. The girl was simply high, up on monkey bars or a mountain or something.

When does the meaning of “high” change? At what point in our development do we first learn that writing a sentence like “The girl is high” will only elicit stifled laughter from our classmates and a stern reprimand from our teachers?


3.

On Tuesday I became intimately acquainted with the local post office. I waited in line a long, long time, and because (at least on my first trip) I hadn’t wizened up enough to bring a book, I had time for people-watching. I noticed that, besides the two-year-old clasped to his mother’s hip, there wasn’t a single male in the place. Rather, fifteen women of varying ages and sizes formed a line winding all the way out the door, a distinctly female chain that told volumes about the gender dynamics of Christmas package-sending.

A girl behind me, probably in her mid to late twenties and carrying a package wrapped in bright candy cane paper, was having trouble finding stamps. She was having so much trouble that she decided to be vocal about it.

“Where are the Christmas stamps?” she asked no one in particular, staring through the glass case directly at the selection of Christmas stamps.

Nobody wanted to answer, but an older lady, a kind soul, felt obligated to say something. She clutched her manila folder to her chest as she leaned forward. “I think they’re in there,” she said softly, pointing to the display case featuring all sorts of stamps paying homage to reindeer, Christmas trees, Frosty the Snowman, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Luini's Madonna of the Carnation.

Obviously, Judaism and the marvels of Renaissance art weren’t good enough. “But don’t they have, like, Santa?” the girl asked.

Someone coughed quietly and the line shuffled forward.

Moments later, the silence was broken again. Another woman, this one with a brown parcel tucked under each arm, asked what time the post office opened.

“8:42,” Santa-girl piped up eagerly, proudly checking her watch (the time was 9:42).

“What?” the other woman asked, wholly confused.

“8:42,” the girl repeated, pleased to be asked for this highly valued information.

“The post office opens at 8:42?” You could practically see the wheels in the poor woman’s head, spinning round and round and trying to make sense of why on earth the United States Postal Service would recognize such an absurd opening time.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry,” Santa-girl blundered, “I thought you asked what time it is.”

“Isn’t it 9:42?” came a strong voice from the back of the line. The voice belonged to a tall, no-nonsense woman suspiciously bereft of any envelopes or packages.

“Oh my gosh,” the girl said, giggling. “I’m, like, not with it today. I just got married,” she offered in way of plausible excuse. “I should be more better than that.”

My English major’s soul just shriveled up and died a little bit.

A holiday trip to the post office. Besides colorful Kwanzaa stamps and my newly inaugurated PO box, first class idiocy seems to be the priority.


4.

I bought a pair of shoes in Italy last summer, white with red polka dots. They were looking a little grimy, so I threw them in the washing machine. Now they’re pink with slightly-less-red polka dots. They’re also too small for my feet. Damn.


5.

Before my illustrious Amherst career, I spent a not-so-illustrious three semesters at Collin County Community College (also known as ‘Quad C’) after returning from an unhappy semester at Chapman University in California. As the only student who had ever gone on to a school like Amherst, I was a poster child for Quad C, my image appearing in various magazine articles, on the pre-show slides at movie theatres, plastered to the side of buses, etc. But by far my most substantial presence was on the credit schedule that was sent out to thousands of students and area residents each semester. There I am, preposterously perky in a purple Amherst shirt (purchased expressly for the photo shoot), smiling gaily on the cover of the credit schedule. Because the photographer was too polite to inform me that the white block letters on my shirt were slightly too broad for my chest, I am proudly displaying my future alma mater: “MHERST.”

I never wore that shirt again.

For whatever reason, I am still on the CCCCD mailing list, perhaps as a way to remind me of my roots and ensure I don’t get all ‘uppity.’ However, Quad C isn’t really one to talk; it has recently forgotten its own roots in a sanctimonious display of upptitude. Instead of ‘Collin County Community College,’ it has re-envisioned itself as simply, ‘Collin College.’ Take that ‘County Community’ clean outta there with a carving knife. It’s like coring an apple and leaving two perfect halves, or going straight from conception to post-delivery by just skipping over all that pregnancy and delivery mumbo jumbo. Who really needs the middle part, anyway? Although it cuts the alliterative appeal by 50%, the name makeover eliminates a lot of unpleasant associations, such as “community,” “county,” and “no endowment.” Plus, now they have a cougar! When you want to mask something, go for the mascot, obviously.

But not everything has gone well. Despite the cougar, and despite the new football team which in Texas makes any wannabe college a real college, Quad C (Dual C?) seems to be suffering from marketing gone awry. This image is on the cover of the current credit schedule:



With this call to action:

It’s not too “latte” to enroll

Ouch. Even my flat chest was better than that.

Little Red Headgames

At the risk of sounding anti-children—which, you have to believe me, I'm really not— I'm just going to come out and say it: I am tired of being manipulated by a stream of propaganda that exploits the utter cuteitude of sundry (and unsuspecting) small children.

In defense of my seemingly heartless position, allow me to explain.

I was recently driving down I75, the large thoroughfare that runs through Dallas and connects it to the myriad of suburbs that have cropped up over the years. The suburban sprawl of the Dallas area is remarkable, really—at this point there are practically suburbs for the suburbs. Cities/towns like McKinney, Allen, Richardson, and Plano have been absorbed into the unending fabric of the DFW metroplex, and it's difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins.

This is further complicated by confusing patterns in street-naming, obviously intended as some city planner's idea of a cruel joke. For example, while driving through Plano you are afforded three distinct options: you may exit at Parker, Park, or Plano Parkway. Oh but wait—Parker is closed, so you'll have to take Park to get to Parker. Or is it Park that's closed, and you're routed through Parker to get to Park? In all likelihood, you'll probably overshoot them both and make it all the way to Plano. Parkway. The road, not the city. You're already in the city. What?

As I was saying, I was driving down I75. Of course, to say I was "driving" would lead one to believe that I was clipping along at a splendid pace. In reality, I was edging along I75, squashed between an oversized minivan and a dusty Camaro with fuzzy dice swinging in the breeze. I had plenty of time to breathe in the mind-clearing aroma of exhaust fumes and reflect philosophically upon the crack in my windshield that seemed to be spreading, slowly but surely, all the way across the dash.

Suddenly, something on the overpass a few hundred feet ahead of me caught my eye. There was a sign on it, a large white sign draped across the bridge. It featured an adorable little girl, her blonde hair in pigtails and her eyes wide and wondering. Beneath the girl in large block letters was a message. It read, "PLEASE SLOW DOWN. MY DADDY WORKS HERE."

Here we have the newest tactic for making motorists obey the speed limits: heaping portions of child-induced guilt.

Some 5-year-old Ford model just made two grand for a one-hour photo shoot. Is her daddy really working ahead? Hell no. He's probably on Wall Street trading stocks and flirting with his nubile secretary who, incidentally, speeds like hell. But by god, this little girl is the symbol of a hundred little girls whose daddies really are working construction ahead. It's all hypothetical. And with that hypothetical daughter staring at me with those hypothetically pleading eyes, I'll be damned if I'm going to hit 80 with the crushing prescience that I might injure/ kill/throw gravel in the face of her hypothetical hard-hat-wearing father.

Modern advertisers are so damn sneaky.

I wonder if children know they're being used as such effective instruments of guilt. This brings to mind an incident that occurred at Amherst several years ago. The Little Red Schoolhouse—aptly named in that it is both little and red, and is also a schoolhouse—sits smack in the middle of the social quad. Not the ideal place for a schoolhouse to be situated, you say? A valid point. But the schoolhouse was actually there before the social dorms were built around it, and evidently the builder saw no conflict of interest between a diminutive schoolhouse where kids learn their ABCs and five large dormitories where older kids learn about LSD.

As was bound to happen, problems ensued.

The social dorms at Amherst are devoted to one primary principle: perpetual partying. In keeping with the P-theme, peeing is common, particularly public peeing by drunken exhibitionists. Not surprisingly, the brick walls of the Little Red Schoolhouse are often chosen as the ideal urinals, and a diverse artistic display of pee stains has enriched the wall for many years, adding to the history and legacy that is Amherst College. But in 2005, the playful antics of hammered college students took a decidedly more sadistic turn, and instead of peeing, there was violence: some rugby player, enraptured with his drunken machismo, took a slugger to one of the windows. A few days later, one of his teammates did the same. And the little children's dreams were shattered in shards of broken glass.

Within a few days, they had their comeuppance. The teachers at the Little Red Schoolhouse had devised a brilliant plan. A sign started circulating around the school, appearing on bulletin boards and stuck under dorm room doors. The sign was a simple piece of paper featuring a child's depiction of the Little Red Schoolhouse, a ruddy drawing in crimson and gold crayon with stick people with bubble eyes and big bubble tears rolling down their cheeks. The message, scrawled in heartbreaking child's handwriting, was simple.

“Please stop breaking the windows in our little red schoolhouse.”

Rip my heart out with a rubber eraser and fingerpaint it black.

A few weeks after the initial posters went out, some anonymous smartass from the socials decided to make his own set of posters in response. These circulated around the campus, too, to a chorus of smirks and closeted chuckles.

This picture showed a circle of devil-children running around the Little Red Schoolhouse playground, screaming and hollering and devil-dancing in infantile glee. In similarly childish handwriting, the mysterious defendant had written:

"Please stop waking me up at 7 am on Monday mornings. I'm hungover as shit."