One of my former coworkers here called me last week. His daughter was accepted to my university, and he wanted to ask me some questions about it. The questions were primarily 1) how cold is it there, and 2) how close to the beach is it. She wasn't interested in visiting, she just wanted to know about the beach. But that is not why I am writing... At some point he asked me if many other people from around these parts attend this school - his daughter was the only one from her class who had even applied. In my response I included the fact that several students from my own class had gone there, although this was unusual, since with a class of 180, I had graduated from a much smaller high school than the one she attends. His response? "Oh, I think it much more harder now than in 1980."
1980? Oh, he thought I said 1980 instead of 180 people! ha ha! English is not his first language, this is an easy mistake to make!
"No, 10 of us went there out of one hundred and eighty students. In my class." There, that clarifies it.
"I know. But I think this University much more difficult to get into now then when you went there in 1980."
mmhmm. The man just added 18 years onto my life. This is not acceptable.
"1980?! Try 1998!!" (I may have kind of yelled.)
"Oh! 1998! Oh my goodness! You are not so old!" Then he laughed a lot.
It is impossible to tell what this laughter means, as he is a man who always laughed after everything he said. "Hi Jennifer, how was your weekend? ha ha ha ha!" or, "How come you come to work? Why you not let your daddy pay for you? ha ha ha ha ha!" Or, "You see on news all those school children got shot? ha ha ha ha!" very strange. But strangeness is no excuse for calling me 50 well before my time.
On another note from last week, here is a little conundrum I faced:
The scene: I am playing team trivia with a new acquaintance (or really a very old acquaintance, but that is another story that involves some stalking, so I'm sure you don't want to hear it) and several of his friends. This question is announced over the speakers: "The brightest star in our night's sky, Sirius, is also known as the ____ star. Fill in the blank with the appropriate animal."
No one at our table knew the answer, or had any basis on which to formulate a guess. Now here is my question: Do I, a) shrug my shoulders and say I don't know either (which is true) and let our team miss this point without even taking a shot at it? Or do I b) let the following words tumble out of my mouth: "I say Dog. The Dog Star. No, it doesn't sound familiar... no, I've never heard of it before... well, see... (looking around at table full of faces staring at me)... in Harry Potter, there's this guy Sirius, and he's an animagus, and his animal he can turn into is a dog. And J.K. Rowling likes her names to have significance. Take Remus Lupin for example, when he was a kid he was bitten by a werewolf, so if he doesn't take his medicine, he turns into a wolf during full moons. His name comes from the myth about Remus and Romulus, twins who were raised by a wolf. And his last name, "Lupin" comes from the Latin "lupine", meaning "wolf." Although it always reminds me of the word "lunar" and therefore the full moon. So... yeah... Sirius turns into a dog..."
and... end of mouth diarrhea.
I won't tell you which route I actually took, but I'm sure that if it were the latter, the one point we gained from answering that question was what they'd remember about that night, and not my scary knowledge of all things Harry Potter.
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