Our Dumb Blog

I was walking to the bathroom just now when the some of the most vivid colors I’ve seen in nature appeared through the window in the corner of my eye. I stopped, transfixed, gazing out at one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. Its hues drew me for a better look toward the window and then through it to the roof outside. My feet walked along the shingles, my eyes locked on the purple tones and other living pigments that mere words can never adequately describe. I sat on a gableand stared at the sky. The cirrus clouds in the west hovered above the horizon, changing tone by the minute.

As I sat there, I realized what it’s all about. I experienced my enlightenment, except unlike Buddha and his bo tree, I was under a live oak on top of a roof. My eyes drank in the beauty before me as my optic nerves delivered the information to a cynical mind that asked, “So?” And itwas then that I realized that it didn’t matter what life threw at me… as long as I had someone to share it with.

As the last shades of pink slipped away and I got up to leave, I noticed that an oddly shaped cloud farther above was moving slowly to my eyes but undoubtably very swiftly at its high altitude. It almost looked like a jet trail, spread out long after its originator had disappeared. But it wasn’t straight like an airplane’s path should be. It curved up and came down to a point. I frowned and stepped back to get a better view. The rest of it appeared from behind one of the oak’s limbs. Then I laughed. “The dang thing’s heart shaped!” I almost said out loud. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was as if one of those sky writing planes had drawn a huge valentine in the sky. Maybe one had, I don’t know. But the sides of it blew slowly outward like nebula from a supernova, leaving Venus shining much too brightly from inside. I laughed again, climbed back in the window, and slammed it shut.

So happy Valentine’s Day, everybody. Or something.

I got mine.

As I was gathering my books strewn across my desk in preparation for school this morning, I caught sight of my mouse standing up on the cardboard tube in the aquarium where he lives (I call it the “mousepad”), with his forepaws leaning up against the glass, and shouting “Take me with you!” Well, okay, maybe it was more like, “Come and get me!” I haven’t quite mastered rodent-speak.

A few minutes later he was perched in my collar, happily gnawing at a crumb from my bagel as I ate while driving on the way to college.
My Greek instructor never noticed him, even though Stalin kept squeaking from inside my shirt, where he’d gone to take a nap. My next class was Public Administration. My professor kept calling my mouse “Satan”. “Stalin,” I’d correct him. “Whatever.” The girl who screamed when she was sitting down next to me in class last time I brought my mouse to school almost did again when she walked in the door. Only this time she was on the other side of the room. I kept him in my pocket with his lump of mouse food while entering psych class. But the instructor wasn’t there yet, so I pulled him out and shouted at my friend Chad on the other side of the room. A dozen people turned around and gasped. The lady nearby started squirming violently. Another girl announced that she wasn’t in the least scared and came over to touch the confused Stalin. I stuffed him back in my pocket as the class started, and he went to sleep as I learned about the hypothalamus in the brain. Afterward I took him over to another friend and introduced them. My psych teacher, who habitually ignores me, actually came over to see my mouse. I told him that Stalin was a behaviorist.

Stalin slept some more while I fooled around on the World Wide Web on our school’s newly acquired Internet connection. Then this guy named Martin came in and decided to take Stalin downstairs “to scare people”. I grabbed my book bag and hurried after him. My theater friends Stephen and Elizabeth were downstairs and tried to engage me in a conversation while I kept one eye on Martin showing off his rodent-connected bravado. That went fine till I heard, “Oh, sick!” I guess Stalin decided that was a good a time as any to answer the call of mother nature. I retrieved him from an all-too-willing-to-part-with-him Martin and accompanied the theater people back to the fine arts building, discussing money making schemes and assassinations with Stephen.

They went upstairs as I continued to my car. But I was interrupted by several people I know who became instantly fascinated by my mouse. Stalin did his best to crawl down the shirt of the girl who asked to hold him as we discussed rodent upkeep. One of the teachers stopped by but then quickly left when Stalin accidentally got loose. Not like he’d go anywhere. “What’s the difference between this and something you trap when it gets in you house?” someone asked me. “Well, he is genetically inferior,” I answered.

About then my English professor came by. I presented my pet to him, and Stalin immediately crawled up onto his shoulder. “I should go into my freshman class like this,” he remarked. “Yes!” we agreed. So the crowd that had formed followed him down the hall. He strolled into the classroom and walked to the head as the room erupted into exclamations. One girl stood up and moved to the back of the room, her back against the wall. “I’ll give you an A on your next paper if you come up here and hold him in your hand,” Dr. Allums offered her. Nothing doing. Those of us in the back laughed. Allums returned the rat to me after letting several students pet him. “It’s like show and tell in kindergarten,” someone commented. I waved goodbye to the class withthe hand I was holding my mouse in to the effect of several more gasps before grinning and walking away.

I had to stop by dad’s office to make some copies on the way home. I neared the office at about the same time as three people coming from the parking lot. They greeted me as I reached down my sleeve and groped around, frowning. “What’s wrong?” “I’ve got a mouse in my shirt,” I said, still struggling to get him out. They looked on in amusement until I finally pulled Stalin outof my sleeve. That’s when their eyebrows shot up. We walked into the office as the receptionist cowered behind the front desk. I continued on back to the copier with Stalin on my head. After meeting a couple of other people in the hall, I headed home, leaving a note on my absent father’s computer screen about how many copies I’d made. Stalin slept, exhausted, in my collar all the way home.

Date: Mon, Jan 29, 1996 20:31 EDT

The altitude is getting to me. I have to breathe hard when trying to keep up with Max, although I’ve made it up stairs much more successfully than I thought I might. Maybe my blood is still thick from this summer. I fell asleep this afternoon on the couch until most of my body woke up, leaving my arm painfully numb. I flopped it against the sofa for a couple of minutes before rolling over to find a new position that would keep the blood in my arms circulating and drool from escaping onto the pillow. I probably slept for an hour and a half. Probably a good thing considering I had to get up before dawn this morning to make it down to the mail room at the air force academy to meet Max at 7:30. Mom dropped me off after swinging by the point where she would pick me up around noon.

Dave was waiting outside the mail room. I bid him a good morning before handing him the text book he’d left at the house the night before. We walked inside and found Max approaching. After checking his mail, he led me outside and into a large building filled with parka-donned cadets. Max was wearing his blues for some reason. I was the only civilian to be seen. We trotted up a couple flights of stairs and entered a class room where Max directed me to a seat next to him. He skimmed his Management book, circling key words with his pencil as I read along. The room slowly filled up until the female instructor walked in at 8:00. Someone said something that sounded vaguely like “ten-hut,” and all the cadets rose instantaneously to attention leaving me sitting all alone. The voice went on to mumble something incoherently as the instructor saluted in its direction. Then everyone returned to their chairs.

The lecture was as informal as most I’ve been in at UM. The instructor insisted on class discussion. The topic was TQM, which, I was pleased to discover instead of having to guess at like I do most military acronyms, means Total Quality Management. The instructor mentioned that it was a buzzword and tried to get the class to explain what that meant. One of the cadets was still confused. “So,” he asked, “a buzzword is like an oxymoron, or a catch 22?” The instructor shook her head. “You’re using buzzwords,” I suddenly pointed out. The entire class turned toward me. “Ooooo…” several of the guys uttered. Max chuckled quietly, “Good one.”

We hurried to the next classroom for BS. This was set up into four tables surrounded by chairs. Max grabbed an extra seat and added it to his table. The class started the same way, this time Max mumbling the unintelligible phrases while saluting the entering professor. The topic was communication. Max turned to the correct page in his Leadership book so I could follow along with the graph the instructor was presenting. The instructor had the class read a story about a navy captain giving orders. Then he gestured toward me and asked Max to make an introduction. Max obliged taciternly, introducting me as from Mobile, Alabama.

“Your sister?” asked the professor. We looked at each other and back up to him, shaking our heads. “Bremer, Brenner,” explained Max, “It’s confusing, I know.” “You’re not really a spy from the general,” asked the instructor, “Are you?” Max nodded. I smiled.

After watching a short segment of Apollo 13 and discussing the giving of orders, we were onto the next classroom for Law. Max and I got into a debate about the constitutionalism of the amount of laws Congress makes before everyone rose to attention again as the instructor entered the room. He talked about freedom of speech as stated by the Constitution and outlined by the courts. Then he divided us up into groups and had us each look at an example and decide what should be done in each according to what we had just learned. Our group got a good one about libel and slander. That was the most interesting class for me.

Finally we walked to the Russian classroom. Inside were a couple of chipped mannequins in uncomfortable looking positions wearing Red Army uniforms. The five guys and instructor all spoke in Russian except occasionally. The instructor looked at Max and seemingly asked a question. Max spoke slowly, saying, among other things, variations of my name and “Alabama.” One of the other guys asked him a question. “Nyet,” responded Max. He asked another one. “Nyet,” Max answered again. Everyone laughed. “Don’t worry,” the instructor assured me, “We’re not laughing at you.” I smiled uneasily.

They reviewed briefly for an upcoming test before we left the classroom and walked to a sort of language lab, listening to one of the students belting out “Silver Bells” in Russian in his deep bass voice. The instructor handed a laser disc to each student when we arrived. Max led me to a cubical where he inserted the disc into a machine and placed a pair of headphones on over his ears. I sat down next to him, repeating his latter action. Clicking the mouse a few times on the monitor in front of us, he started a film up about a Russian investigator. I removed one headphone as Max translated what was being said. Then he switched to scene 4. We watched the whole thing in Russian. Then Max started it over again, this time only watching a couple lines of dialogue at a time and reading the Russian text along with it. He attempted to translate each line, clicking on words that gave him trouble. This brought up a lexical meaning for the word at hand. If he really had problems, he’d click in another spot to reveal the entire English translation of the lines.

When the time was up, I followed Max outside, across the terrazzo, and into his dorm. Four degrees were standing at attention in the hall, shouting out today’s lunch menu. Max dropped his book bag in his room before leading me back out and up to the chapel, where I was to meet mom. We said goodbye, and I watched him walk away.

You know, we ought to live off peak. I was reading about this in a Reader’s Digest article about how to get more time out of your day. I was reading it only because I start at the beginning of a Reader’s Digest and read all the way through it while in the bathroom. I wanted to skip that article because I KNOW I’m not very efficient with time, and I don’t need anyone to tell me I am. But one of the items in it I liked. It talked about living off peak.

That means going to work early to avoid rush hour, or eating at a restaurant at four in the afternoon when no one else is gonna be there. Maybe I liked it because it was talking about living differently from everyone else. Maybe it’s just because my family is so screwy that we do everything at odd times anyway. When I homeschooled, I would get up about nine, eat breakfast and stuff by ten, then we’d eat lunch about two, supper at eight or nine, and then I’d go to bed whenever. We still eat supper late. And I suppose by staying up till odd hours in the morning during the weekend and sleeping in till noon, I live off peak myself.

My mom called a family meeting after supper the other night to talk about Christmas, what we wanted to do this year and stuff. “Do we want to have lights outside? do we want a Christmas letter? do we want a tree?” I dunno, every year we talk about doing Christmas differently and every year we seem to do it the same. Anyway, I said, “Let’s live off peak. Let’s just celebrate Christmas a week later. We can pick up a Christmas tree that someone’s dumped out already, and if there’s still some tinsel on it, we won’t have to decorate it.” That’s a line from one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. My grandmother was laughing at this point, my sister was rolling her eyes so hard I thought they might just roll right out of her head, my dad was shaking his head, and my mom was trying not to act amused.

Ben got excited, “Yeah!” I went on, “And everything will be on sale so we won’t have to buy presents or anything else at full price. It’s all part of living off peak.” My mom squinted at me. She does that whenever she thinks she’s not heard me correctly. “What?” she asked.

Dad cleared his throat. “So…” he said, “Do we want a Christmas tree this year?”

We’ll be getting yet another Lealand Cyprus.

Well, lab was fun today. Chris Hyatt and Adam Krill (or whatever) were
cutting up. Chris wrote an acronym for LAB — Long And Boring. Then Delaine
Jenkins (I think that’s her name) wrote a poem about Dr. Bilbo. It was
hilarious. But she made us give it back. Needless to say, if Dr. Bilbo had
gotten ahold of it, somebody would have been in trouble. Chris was flipping
rulers at people while Dr. Berry was writing on the board. Adam would answer
the questions by looking at my worksheet which was a bad idea because I was
wrong a couple of times. Two hours goes by quicker when you’re having fun.
or something…

Well, today was my first rehearsal for Snow White. Christabel, my
character, has all of 6 lines, 4 of which are spoken with everyone else.
And she’s double cast! Oh well. Stephen has 1 line. Incidently, all of our
lines are in the same scene.