So, if schoolteachers are now driving BMWs and Audis (and I know you are via good authority) what has happened to all the old clapped-out Volvo station wagons with a top speed 30 percent slower than that which was posted. They are the vehicles that teachers almost exclusively used to drive?
Just one of those imponderables that has visited my fevered brain. Volvo. When I was a less-than-sensitive adolescent male (less-than-sensitive and adolescent male are redundancies, actually) and we learned the clinical term for female nether parts we immediately applied it to that Swedish car. Of course, teen boys find ‘all’ sexual anatomical references dirty, even the clinical appellations so it was all a laff riot. Actually, judging by TV sitcoms, even grown males don’t move beyond this. Yes, there is gratuitous ‘male bashing’ in the sitcom world.
Moving along, I’m going to posit an observation that flies in the face of the findings of the otherwise much-admired late Chris Hitchens, who once opined in a Vanity Fair essay that females weren’t funny. I beg to differ, late Chris.
Most of my favorite ‘funny’ bloggers are female and some of them are downright hilarious. They are funny because their blogs tackle ‘life’ issues in a droll and often highly original manner that I can only envy. Male bloggers tend to focus more on ‘big’ stuff and miss the elements of our days that make life more tolerable. Indeed some of the finest humor writers at the commercial level were also female such as Dorothy Parker, Betty MacDonald or currently Cody Diablo. Yeah, well there was always dull-dull-dull Virginia Woolf to provide balance, but you get my drift.
There is a kid in the ballpark across the street who is having his daily batting practice. He does it virtually any day it’s clement. He tosses the ball into the air and hits it. Periodically his dad is out there on weekends lobbing him balls – but never another kid. I don’t know why that is. It’s kind of sad.
An elderly female friend – a lovely 85-year-old possessed of that wisdom and candor that comes from being nearly four-score – turned to me earlier today and asked: “Are you happy?” I was nonplused. How was I to answer? I mumbled something about “as far as I know.” And that set me to thinking. But I’ve reached no conclusion. It’s such a big subject with so many variables.
We know the world isn’t generally speaking a sane place when you consider the nonsensical existence of Pippa Middleton as camera and tabloid fodder. Yes, she’s got a cute caboose. So do countless females, some of whom I even know. Why do we care about this creature? It isn’t as if she’s done anything actually worthy. She’s the kid sister of another tolerable looking female who is married to somebody a little more noteworthy and who might some day be King of England if there is still an England to be king of.
We furthermore know the world isn’t exactly a sane place when we consider the South Carolina Republican Primary and the players therein. That effort also makes the world seem like a less safe place.
