Amateur Perfectionist Lessons

In the grand scheme of things, it's pretty easy to bang out a blog post. Nothing in particular to talk about? No problem! I believe this will be my 1,058th post about nothing in particular. It's a topic dear to my heart.

Much more difficult is writing about something - any actual, you know, thing - and, moreover, writing carefully about it. Putting together a first draft. Getting feedback. Revising. Fine-tuning. Revising some more.

At this point in my development as a writer, the revision process feels like this:


Damn it! I just remembered I clean forgot to ask my professor what his take is on double-spacing after a period.

Meanwhile, we had some drama in my other class, at a different institution, neither of which for these purposes I think I'll name in any searchable fashion. An email went out to all the students Friday. My professor, stating it had nothing to do with any of us in the class, was resigning as instructor of record. More details would be given at the next class meeting, if not sooner.

This was rather abrupt.

Being about one degree (if that) removed from high school students, we were excitedly abuzz about this development as the classroom filled today. What happened? Did our professor get fired? Leave in a (Chevy) Huff? How did we feel about the instructional style, anyway? Was there a lack of clear direction? Were the lectures productive?

You would think the presence of an unfamiliar, older person near the back of the room would shut us up. But perhaps lulled into security by having already accepted my middle-aged person into their midst, my fellow students gossiped away.

Eventually the stranger moved to the front of the room and distributed business cards, revealing himself to be the chair of our missing professor's department. "I see you've already heard the news," he said, with a certain sense of irony (irony not being an unfamiliar concept, I wouldn't think, to anyone in his particular field).

I don't know that we were particularly chastened, though we probably should have been. The department head asked if any of us had any notion of our professor's imminent departure, and asked to be forwarded a copy of the email suddenly announcing it. We meekly accepted the assignment of a new professor, under the assumption that what we were getting was at least as good and possibly better than what we'd had. But I have a pang for the departed professor, whom I'd liked. Class started a few days earlier here than it did in my writing class (my writing/Shakespeare professor having been summoned to jury duty), so this was my first face-to-face encounter with the return to academia. It matters to me. It's special! I hope all is well.

But if not, I hope my professor leaves well enough alone and doesn't try to hammer anything out.

The Importance of Being Educated

The kids’ grades came in the mail yesterday, and I was thinking, did the school really have to send their grades to arrive during the holidays? Couldn't it have waited till a bit later? Like, when the kids are in their 40s?

I think it would go something like this.

SCENE: A handsomely appointed breakfast parlor, sometime in the future. Flying cars can be glimpsed occasionally through the French doors, as well as some construction work being carried on in the distance by a mixed robot/human crew in hard hats and safety vests. On the wall is an imposing formal portrait of an attractive middle-aged woman with an intelligent, determined, yet kindly face. At the table, a healthy, prosperous-looking elderly couple is eating breakfast.

A robot butler, which receives a living wage and full benefits as required by the Widget Treatment Fairness Act of 2019, glides into the room on its hoverpads, bearing the mail on a small silver tray. SYLVIA picks up the mail and glances idly through it, tossing a few pieces aside. Her eyes linger on one envelope and she opens it, her brow furrowing, and pores over its contents for several moments.

EDGAR: What’s that you’ve got there, honey?

SYLVIA: This is very strange. It’s Susie’s grades.

EDGAR: Her grades? Do you mean her latest polling numbers?

SYLVIA: No, no, I mean grades. From her sophomore year of high school, apparently.

EDGAR: Good lord. They’re a bit late, aren’t they?

SYLVIA: Somehow the school got our address wrong. This seems to have been sitting around in the dead letter office for a couple of decades.

EDGAR: I always wondered how she came through Algebra. I remember she was struggling a bit.

SYLVIA: She failed.

EDGAR: What?!

SYLVIA: And it wasn’t even close. She failed Algebra, and English, and World History, and -

EDGAR (interrupting): But – but – I always thought she was doing so well in school. She was such a promising kid, playing sports, studying piano, volunteering as a school office aide... hey, wait a minute. Let me see that envelope!

SYLVIA (handing him the papers): Well, she did end up President of the Federated States of Earth.

EDGAR (looking over them): My God. With these grades, I’m surprised she didn’t end up working for the Skyway Department.

SYLVIA glances out the window, where a robotic flagger’s ambiguous signaling has just caused a 15-car pileup, and smoking debris is raining down onto the concrete roadway with which the crew has paved over a creek for no readily apparent reason, seeing as how all traffic is airborne. Edgar! How can you say such a terrible thing about your own daughter?!

EDGAR: How the hell can anybody get a 14 in P.E.??

SYLVIA (wringing her hands): Well, I don’t know, you remember that bad stomachache she had…

EDGAR: For twelve weeks?! I don’t think so!

SYLVIA: But, dear, it’s been such a long time. Why get all worked up about it now?

EDGAR: Long time, my ass. I want her impeached! I’m calling the Secretary of Education.

Teenagers!

Can't live with 'em, and divorcing your kids is generally frowned upon by society.

Stuck-up prigs! (Society, I mean, not teenagers, who frankly could benefit from being a little more stuck-up and a little less the way they normally are, which is not particularly stuck-up, not that teenagers can't from time to time be stuck-up, but they're generally more likely to be massively emotional, hormonal, and drama-laden, than with which being stuck-up is infinitely easier to deal, inasmuch as being stuck-up does not generally engage innocent bystanders, i.e. parents who have just gotten home from work and only wanted to check email and chill for a little bit, in full-blown screamfests, which are not, contrary to what reality TV may have led you to believe, fun.)

We're all better now and have had a nice talk and I still love Katie very much, but if everyone else would be so kind as to refrain from being mad at me for at least a couple of days, I'd really appreciate it.

And if somebody would pat me gently on the shoulder and perhaps say kind things like "there, there" and "poor baby," it would be just heavenly. Because - not always, of course, but sometimes - there's nothing else like having a teenager to make you really want your mommy.