Meeting the Parents

I just met the parents.

And I just realized that anyone who has read my blog over the past six months is probably surprised to find out that I have convinced a girl that I am not, technically, a barbarian. Alas, using chicanery and two forms of calculus, I have done just that.

Well, a few months passed, and over the weekend, I met the people who spawned my girlfriend, which is sort of like a first date your girlfriend all over again, except that you aren't going to be opening your wallet and there will (hopefully) be no goodnight kissing, unless they're italian. And this is the most indisputably awesome thing about meeting parents: You are not expected to kiss them.

Even with that obligation absolved, I was still a little aprehensive about the whole thing. Once again, it's like a first date, only it's two first dates in one. You have to make good impressions on both mom and dad, which requires you to summon two diametrically opposed parts of the brain -- like watching "Animal House" and reading Hemmingway at the same time.

Knowing that I am a) an idiot, and b) a giver of bad first impressions (it seems I'm too reserved causing people to infer that I do not like them), I decided that my best strategy would be to talk about benign things like my job and my family, make only the easiest, safest jokes and otherwise keep my mouth shut, much like Jay Leno. After all, moms are easy. You can win over a mom in no time because they want to like you. You just have to not give them an obvious reason not to, which is harder than it sounds. It would be horrifyingly easy for me to mess this up. So keeping it simple, I thought, would at least get me mom's approval, which generally goes a long way in getting dad's approval. Dads want to dislike you, or are at least looking for any reason to dislike you. But they get lazy, and don't spend nearly as much time thinking about it as moms do. So they usually end up just grunting and trusting mom's opinion (I have two younger sisters, mind you).

Anyway, I was playing it fairly well. Made it through one entire evening with no major screwups. And the second evening went almost as well, except for a harmless remark I made about myself showing a little leg to get something. Well, this rapidly devolved into Mom and Girlfriend talking about showing cleavage while I tried to pretend I didn't know the first thing about cleavage and Dad tried to pretend he wasn't hearing his wife and daughter talking about showing cleavage to gain favor with men.

Fortunately, that situation ended with neither me nor Dad uttering the words "boobs," "cleavage," or any of their derivitives.

Cs and Degrees

It is (painfully) obvious to most who know me that I do not necessarily put forth painstaking effort in my academic endeavors.

It is simply a matter of priorities*, and school is not at the top of the list, instead ranking somewhere below rooting# (definition to come later. For now, let's just say "rooting" is what young men do on weekends) and somewhere above plucking nose hairs. Plus, I have always worked during school, and that has always come first.

Anyway, this is what I've learned through six years of college. This is how you make it through (Oviously, I have not always followed my own advice):

1. Attend class
2. Turn in assignments

That is all. If you want a B average, I suggest turning in assignments on time and attending at least 90 percent of the time. If you want an A average, well, I cannot help you. I've never done that.

But if you're merely interested in cruising through college, getting a degree in something innocuous like Communications, History, English, Sociology, Journalism, the main thing to do is show up. You don't necessarily show up to learn anything. If you're like most people, the last relevant thing you learned was in about 9th grade**. My boss, a successful sports columnist and editor, said everything he needed to know about life, he learned by watching "Rockford Files."^ You show up for two reasons: 1) This is how you retrieve assignments, and 2) To avoid getting slammed with non-attendance penalties. As recently as five years ago, college classes didn't necessarily require attendance. But they've gotten all uppity these days, and I suspect their motives have little to do with concern for the student's well being. Anyway, check out the syllabus^^ and find out how many classes you can miss and what the excused absence policy is. Don't screw this up and you're golden.

Secondly, just turn in stuff. I promise you, if you merely turn in every assignment, you will not get worse than a C. This doesn't mean you have to do every assignment correctly, or necessarily even complete all the requirements of it. You're just trying to get a few points here so you don't have to ace the final to get to 70 percent overall.

Most classes are structured to allow stupid people and bad test-takers to get good grades. Classes aren't so much about teaching as they are about getting people through. The best example of this was a spanish class I took at KU in which 70 percent of the grade was determined by homework assignments, half of which were on-line "quizzes" that allowed you to go back as many times as you wanted and re-do answers until you got a perfect score. But you had to do this every day. I got no worse than an 82 percent on all four of the tests, including the final, and registered a D in the class. Meanwhile, the D-bag who sat behind me who could barely say his name in spanish, got a B because he took all of the daily quizzes. My point is, most classes are structured this way. There are lots of built-in points that soften the effects of tests and hide your inability to master the material.

In probably 20-30 percent of classes, doing these things will get you a B. You'll remember enough by sitting in class and doing assignments to perform well on tests. In the other 70-80 percent, you'll have to study a little. But that's only if you want to.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some pesky nose hairs to pluck.
* -- Or abject irresponsibility.
# -- There is a breed of pig called the "Pineywood Rooter," which has a long snout it uses to dig up delights from the earth. This is what young males do when they are out and about. We go "rooting" for women, or another manner of good time, but mostly women.
** -- Unless you went to public school, in which case you probably never learned anything.
^ -- This is a man who also says Tom Jones was the best concert he's ever seen. You be the judge.
^^ -- Nothign about the syllabus, but that's enough footnotes, I think.

The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

I don't want to make anybody feel bad about their wheels, but a car just sold for $5.5 million.

It was Carrol Shelby's 1966 Shelby Cobra "Super Snake". It has twin superchargers on a 427, giving it over 800 horsepower, meaning it can go from 0-60 mph in about three seconds. For perspective's sake, your Cavalier goes from 0-20 in about four seconds.

Anyway, since it was the personal car of perhaps the greatest (certainly the most famous) muscle car guy ever, the personal Shelby Cobra of Shelby himself, the vehicle is literally a one-of-a-kind collector's piece. One other Cobra "Super Snake" (meaning it had twin super chargers) was built for Bill Cosby, but it was wrecked --not by Cosby -- years ago.

Cobras of any kind, by the way, are exceedingly rare. You've probably never even seen a real one -- most are fiberglass kit cars. Accordingly, most Cobras go for somewhere in the $300,000 range and up, depending mostly on what the car was used for.

My point is, if you're gonna drop $5.5 million on a car, this would be the car. And I'm not going to get off on a rant about how much money $5.5 million is, about how many Toyota Camrys you could buy with that (301), how many tickets to paradise you could buy with that (100,000, if we're counting Eddie Money concert tickets) or how many years' supplies of penis enlargement pills you could buy with that (22,921 years' worth of "Endowmax"). I don't want to get into all that.

I am curious whether the buyer, one Ron Pratt of Chandler, Ariz., who also owns a $4.32 million Futureliner van, will ever, ever, even after a thousand Endowmaxes, drive his Cobra. I'm guessing Ron, Jr. isn't taking this to prom. Senior probably has a $350,000 Bentley for that. Will he seal it in an air tight container? Put it on a spinning pedestal? Hire a full-time model to stand next to it wearing only the bill of sale?

Yeah, think of that next time the Neon blows a gasket.