Tuesday, April 20, 2010

school day

I am up on campus right now. In the Spring it is great. Students are out. All the trees look gorgeous. There is just an energy. And then I remember that I am 32 and surrounded by teenagers. But that's ok. I will just think positive. Pretend I am working on my second PhD or something. This is the day that I should have brought Dalton up here. There was a band playing outside. Lots of cool booths set up. One where they were making grilled cheese sandwiches for the students for free, and the students could just donate whatever they wanted for them. All the proceeds went to fund some non-profit. Darling.

So, I am sitting on the bare little hill that is in front of the band, and am eating my grilled tomato and cheese listening to a half-way decent rendition of the Carr's You Kept It Goin'. I washed it down with my favorite desert here at the school- chocolate pudding in a cup with crushed Oreo's. No idea who invented that delicacy..probably the same geniuses who first stuck shredded carrots and pineapple in green jello, but I crave it. It turns the Oreo's mushy enough that it all turns in to this black and brown goop. The Book Buy Back place was giving out free cans of pop. It was like being in college. Oh wait, I am in college! How fun. Pardon me if I find the novelty of all of this really adorable. It's just that my first go at college was somewhere that was a stone's throw from my parent's house and seemed more like a high school both in terms of the rigor and my maturity, than the college (make that junior college) that it was.

But now, I am at the real deal. Granted, I am pretty jaded. Most of the time I trying not to do giant eye-rolls as my fellow twenty year old students make grand speeches in class, but truly at the same time I am kind of doing an internal fist pump because of the grandeur of the process of enlightenment. Sometimes I think of these "kids" in a maternal fashion and can see their progression as they come in to class with these rock solid formed opinions that were most likely the product of parental and societal imprinting more than anything else, and over time form their own independent ideas. Their ideas might not be radically different than their parents, but they are their own. What a marvelous thing. Not their high school Engligh teacher's, not the rote memorized dribble of some one in authority. But their own unique take on life. Like a fingerprint. My fingerprint changes often. Sometimes daily. Some truth that seemed so certain can twist and morph in to varying shapes and all I can do is let it. It is terrifying, the idea of loosing your opinion. The thought that you need something immediately to replace it with. But there is a power that comes from the uncertainty of what your opinion is on a subject. What your idea of right and wrong is in relation to something. Keeping yourself open can be an exciting process.

OK, where was I? So, I am at the Marriott library. Love this place. I want one of their marble coffee tables in my house. I wish there were on campus housing here. There should be. No idea why, because I wouldn't be living in it. Unless my family were driving me nuts, and then maybe a dorm room to myself wouldn't be the worst thing. Especially if I could just walk outside and get free grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches with the Carr's playing in the background. I got a new MacBook. I know how to use about 1% of it. It's kind of like giving a lamborghini to a twelve year old. It's intimidating. So, I plan on taking these classes and getting all techy and then the next thing you know I am solving my husband's computer problems and finding his missing documents and files, and then the second coming has officially been ushered in.

I need a new phone. First I dropped it six hundred times, and so the texts were wigging out. And then I left it at Dans grocery store somewhere and it's gone. And so I need a new one. And I was going to do the IPhone but it scares me too. Just seeing people doing that motion where they are scrolling across their touch screen, like their fingers are doing some jazzersize routine on their phone- it bugs me. I am sorry. I like the sound of a keyboard. I like the feel of the key crunching down. I also don't like my nails long enough to have any white showing on them, and I would rather pick my nose than have a booger in it. And I can't use to much toilet paper. And I hate washing my car because I feel like it is the biggest waste of money on the planet. So I have some peculiarities. I'm just saying, not being in to the touch screen isn't the craziest thing.

Oh, I did ask this crazy tall guy today if he was on the basketball team, which I bet they hate because it is a little bit presumptous of me. I mean just because he is wearing like a size seventy shoe and has on athletic shorts, and is twice as tall as me, doesn't mean that he is a baller (isn't that hip that i use that word!) but whatever- he said he was and I asked him if he would get his teammates to sign a ball for my son's school auction and he said yes. So, now I have to go wrangle the bookstore in to forking over a U of U ball. But not before I write my papers...ugh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Must be talking about the same "energy in teh air" that was used to create that flaming email that was sent out to everyone in the neighborhood.

Way to go! Your email now explains more about who you are.

Delia said...

I don't like touch screens either. We got a "texting" phone with a flip out keyboard. I much prefer that. :)