Monday, 14 March 2011
I didn’t go to work today. There’s a slight hint of illness in the air. Jennifer appears to have a low-grade cold, coupled with terrible back pain. She went to bed very early tonight; at about 7:00. Isla joined her in bed about 45 minutes later. Owen and I stayed up to play Uno and Sorry, and then we watched a couple episodes of The Simpsons. He sat right next to me as we watched them online via Hulu. He said that he wanted to watch an episode of Family Guy, too, but I told him that show is for older kids.
Owen argued that he prefers Family Guy because they go out into space.
I countered that they do not, as a rule, spend time in space, we just happened to see one episode one time that did take place in space. Owen gave me a look like I was lying to him. I don’t blame him, my argument, though accurate, did come across as suspect.
I told him it was “getting late,” which I say (regardless of the time) whenever I feel a bit exasperated as a father.
About an hour later, Owen was in bed, too. I stayed up and read, and then I printed off my assignment for tomorrow. Or, at least, I tried to. The printed cartridge must’ve already printed 10 pages, which means it can’t possibly print anymore. I was presented a barely legible, uneven print-out.
Guess I’m stopping at Kinko’s tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
I picked Owen up from school today, and I told him we were heading over to the St. Paul Corner Drug store for some ice cream. He didn’t object.
This drug store is the kind of place that the word “quaint” was invented for. You sit at these bar stool and a soda jerk makes up your ice cream for you. The prices are really low and, since it’s also a pharmacy, you get old folks sitting down next to you ordering “soda water.”
Anyway, as with everything within the St. Paul city limits, there’s no place to park. We approached the stoplight just before the drug store. As I waited for the light to turn green, I began looking around for a parking spot. Alas, Lady Luck was on my side: directly in front of the store were two open spots!
The light turned green, and I prepared to make a left onto Snelling so that I could park in front of the store. The vehicle in front of me was also making a left. And…wouldn’t you know it? The driver of that vehicle also intended to use one of those open parking spots. And guess what? She decided to park in the closer one. I was right behind her and, on a busy street such as Snelling, was unable to go around her to park in the next spot. So I just sat there, waiting for the cars to go by so that I could parallel park in that open spot.
But then the woman decided to pull forward. Ooh…how nice of her! Now she will still have a convenient spot, and she will allow me to park behind her with no need of rushing out into traffic or parallel parking. Well, maybe in a perfect world that’s how things would proceed, but this is reality. The women pulled ahead about five feet, thereby straddling both spots. I considered pulling right up to her bumper, but the back half of my car still would’ve been past the “No Parking Here to Corner” sign, and I surely would’ve been ticketed.
I waited for a moment to see if the woman intended to pull forward more. She didn’t. So I drove around her and honked as I drove by. She seemed oblivious.
Moments later, Owen and I walked into the soda shop and, wouldn’t you know it? – there was the oblivious woman having an ice cream with her daughter. Just as Owen and I sat down, the cashier handed the woman back a wad of cash, and the woman began thumbing through it, getting it in order to shove into her wallet.
As the cashier gave her some napkins, the woman held up a 10 dollar bill and said, “Is this Benjamin Franklin?”
“Yeah, I think so,” the young cashier said.
Woman: “Oh, okay. So was he the president that…”
Cashier: “Oh, no, Franklin was never a President.”
Woman: “Oh, but he was the man who invented electricity, right?”
At this point, the cashier looks over at me, nervously, as if the can’t quite think of how to respond without insinuating that the customer is a buffoon. (My professor often dons a similar look.) She replied, slowly, “Well, I think he discovered electricity, but he didn’t invent it.” Which, you know, isn’t really correct, either, but it’s close enough to the fact that I would let it slide in general conversation.
The woman, meanwhile, nodded at her daughter as if she had just bestowed some grand bit of knowledge upon this up and coming generation. She put her wallet into her large purse and headed out the door. She got in her minivan (you know, the thing Henry Ford invented) and drove away.
I asked the cashier how long a person must live before they know that Franklin was not a President. The cashier laughed a little but, to her credit, she tried to be conciliatory to her former customer, “Oh, she was such a nice lady, though.”
On the way home, I asked Owen if Benjamin Franklin was ever the President. “No,” Owen said. I asked Owen how he knew that. “Because I just heard you talking about it,” he said. So I guess the answer to my question is: 5 years. It turns out that woman was a source of education today, after all.
Oh – and just to clarify – no, that is not Benjamin Franklin on the $10. That’s Alexander Hamilton. And in case you don’t recognize these guys by their famous faces, you can just look at the large caption below their pictures.
The one on the $10, for example, reads HAMILTON. He wasn’t President, either.