So I walk out of my apartment, happy as a clam. Why shouldn't I be? It’s Friday. I look out the window to see snow. Big fat chunky flakes and they are sticking! I walk directly back in and take off my peep toe pumps and plop on my clunky snow boots. Isn’t snow supposed to give you a heads up that it’s coming?
I’m in my windowless office now. My colleague said that the snow has melted and it’s just bitterly cold out there. Now I’ve only one hat this winter and it’s an ugly hat. It’s a knit hat my mom knit for me. It’s cute but not on me. It’s bigger than my head so it juts out like a helmet. When I put it on, I look like Belker from Hill Street Blues. Seriously. My husband made me growl the other day and not the good growl.
If I weren’t lazy, picky and downright in denial that I need winter gear, I’d go and buy a flippin’ winter hat. Every year, I go through denial. See, winter gear is usually heavy and bulky. I don’t like heavy and bulky. I’m a petite woman. I swear the weight of a bulky jacket and my work bag shortens my height by at least two inches. Add the trauma of years carrying a heavy book bag during my parochial school days and you’ve got one chick who abhors heavy items, unless it’s a gold bar. BTW, a class action suit should be placed against parochial schools. I swear those books kept me from reaching my potential height of 5’6”. This is probably fruitless though, since I’m reminded in the weekly newsletter of the financial belt tightening the Archdiocese of New York must do to stay in the black.
Not to sound all old and rickety either but in my day, there were no fancy pants wheel-able school bags. For the first 3 years of my school-life, I was required to use the school’s official bag, a bowling bag. No lie. This thing was a bowling bag with the school insignia and name on the front. If lugging that thing around didn’t stretch my arms to gorilla-like lengths, I don’t know what did. After 3rd grade, the only outlet you had to show your individuality was your book bag. Mine was a green backpack with a billion lanyards attached to it. Oh, I also had a super-cool Hello Kitty pencil case, the kind that had the magnetic closures and built-in pencil sharpener and eraser.
Nowadays, kids not only get to wheel their books in Spongebob Squarepants luggage they also get to go online to pull up reading material instead of lugging the gym sock smelling American History book home. What the hell is that smell in old textbooks, anyway? It’s like stale paper placed in a cold cellar and then left in a steamy gym locker for a year to age.
No longer do I see kids being let out of school with a boulder strapped to their backs. Now, they run out with book bags that look nearly empty. I'm not even going into the fact that some kids have book bags that look like shoe bags. Ok, the truth is, I rarely see a child come out of school because I’m stuck in my windowless bunker but when I do, they seem rather light and feathery.
When the time comes for us to have kids and they start school, I’m sure that most of their textbooks and materials will come from the net. Workbooks will be printouts. Foreign language homework will include Windows Media clips of conversational Spanish. Phonetics and Handwriting will no longer be on the curriculum.
On an unrelated note, Honey how about naming our kid, Diphthong?
