Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Café chatter

Oh my God, the woman at a nearby table is explaining to her professor the details of her nervous breakdown that lead her to not prepare for his exam. Does she know that all of us are only pretending we can’t hear?  I am tempted to jump in and say: you were so right to go to student mental health services! You sound like you are completely beyond the beyond. Get more help! And pick a more private spot to explain your suicidal tendencies. Twenty of us know too much and are now sitting at the edge of our seats, waiting to hear his response.

UPDATE: He’ll let her retake the (philosophy) class in another semester. She is pleased. Morbid thoughts are pushed aside, the future looks good to her again. Such power in the professorial magic wand (or in the student threat of mental collapse)!

UPDATE no.2: Ah! Having addressed one issue she is forging ahead with the next: “what about my GPA?” she groans. He cuts her some slack here as well. Incomplete this, drop that, do this and it’ll all work out. She is dripping gratitude. She is also stacking her other health issues on the table for him (and us all). Enough! The problem has been taken care of, move on, move on! He cannot also be expected to fix your eating habits! The professor, the god, the therapist, the healer, the dietician – how much is placed on the shoulders of this poor man... How bad he is at saying “I’m sorry, I only teach philosophy, nothing more.”

Has no one noticed all the pretty little stop signs around here?

I think I am an okay driver. I have been behind the wheel of a car since I was 18. I was in NY then and decided the time was ripe to learn and so I called a driving school that advertised its services on the back of a matchbox and asked for a couple of lessons. The instructor came over to where I was living in Manhattan, sat me behind the wheel and said “drive!”

Since then, I have logged in what seems like millions of miles on several continents, in bad weather, poor road conditions, amidst tractors, cattle and bicyclists, in the glare of broad daylight and in the middle of a pitch black night. I have never had an accident. My driving is so calm and predictable that it puts most passengers on long hauls to sleep. I stop for pedestrians on crosswalks and I try not to run over little critters on the road.

But I am at my wits end when I negotiate the newly constructed little curving drive that snakes past the west-side Borders in Madison. This stretch of road seems to defy even the best of the best. No one drivers correctly here. Drivers pull out of  parking lots (which, unfortunately, surround you on all sides) and side lanes without heed to convention or rules of the road, in the way that you would when you have no idea who has the right of way and you don’t care.

If I stuck to my guns and did what the good book told me (I mean the driving manual), I would be the proud owner of a pulverized heap of metal. So, in case you are reading this blog, let me send forth this little note:
Dear city planners and road engineers, 
 
You suck.

Sincerely,
nc