Yesterday while patrolling a parking lot, one of our newer students apparently completely spaced on the alphabet and, panicking a little, starting making new phonetic codes up as he radioed in license plate numbers. “V,” which is supposed to be rendered “victor,” became “Virginia,” etc. But what really took the cake was his impromptu offering replacement for an “F,” which is supposed to be “foxtrot.” What was the first “F” word that sprung to this kid’s mind?
Monsieur I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Or That You Still Read Those Novels With My Chisled Jaw and Windswept Mane On the Cover PS - Do You Remember When I Was Hit In the Face By a Duck, himself!
We are all positively dying to unravel his thought process on this one!
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – William Shakespeare, Henry VI
Alright, minions, what say ye?
Madame, what were your feelings towards the defendant, this law student before you? Are you sure there was no animosity towards him? You are willing to testify that you do not think badly of those who practice law? Really? You respect and admire all lawyers?
Exhibit A, your conversation of this morning in our office:
“Oh, I know him!,” you exclaimed, overhearing our employees talking about a third party person. “He’s studying to get his Judas Doctorate.”
Ladies and gentlemen of the court, Freudian Slip much?
“I’ve ridden the tiger ragged. That tiger, it’s rolled over on its blazing back and put up its paws and just asked me to stop.” – Glenn Duncan, I Lucifer
I really was expecting a slow day today, kittens. It’s below freezing so no one’s about, my phone has rung exactly twice, and until 11 this morning I was staring at my empty inbox wondering how I would fill the time. Woof, was I misled!
Hennessy and I are wrangling dozens of student uniforms that have gone “missing” over the past few months since we have nothing to give to the handfuls of new students we keep hiring. Shockingly, all these “missing” uniforms have turned up in the very locker rooms students and supervisors have sworn blind they’ve not been in for months.
I’m up to my elbows in paperwork finding arrest records, dating from before I was born, on microfiche, running background checks, and logging hours of training for our officers. Goodness knows whether or not I’ll get lunch before 3 at this point!
However, that quiet time was semi-productive. After a period of Wiki-surfing, it is now a driving ambition of my life to achieve this honor!
Can I manage this without moving to Nebraska? Somehow I feel as though I mingle well with the august company. Admiral C. Small Dog of the good ship HMS Guppy!
“Let it be a lesson to you to be less busy in the future!” – Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Calm down, minions, I’m not talking about me. Today we bring you a morality tale of A) staying out of other people’s business and B) not exaggerating.
We have an EMT internship program on campus and all of our kids are highly trained to assist in medical emergencies, often they are our first responders. But they, like us, are often dispatched to non-emergencies because of faulty (not to say completely false) information.
Yesterday we received a call that there was a pregnant woman with vaginal bleeding on the floor of a restroom and non-responsive.
Our valiant EMTs burst into the bathroom, surprising the poor girl (who was not unconscious but bent over the counter and probably wishing she was dead from both pain and embarrassment).
“You’ve had some vaginal bleeding?” an EMT asked professionally.
“Well, yes,” she answered, confused.
“How many months pregnant are you?”
No, the other kind of hysterical pregnancy.
There was a terrible pause. She paled and clutched at the sink. “I’m pregnant?!”
It turns out she had been brought low by menstrual cramps, excused herself from her companions and went to the restroom. A concerned friend relayed this information in a rather garbled way to a another friend, who in turn relayed yet a more garbled version to another friend, who in turn called 911. Thankfully all was sorted out with some profuse apologies, pain killers, and a vigorous telling off for the person who called us without having a clue what was going on. And so, my likely-red-faced darlings, let that be a lesson to you: get your facts straight. Otherwise people end up hurt. Or pregnant.
“I was so cold the other day, I almost got married.” – Shelley Winters
There is a strange American phenomenon that has yet to be satisfactorily explained to me: the wearing of coats, or rather lack thereof.
Even when it’s freezing there will be hordes of people in shorts, opened toed shoes, and mere t-shirts, shivering in the biting wind. When the rain pours down, I seldom see umbrellas, just lots of people with their collars turned up against the torrent or huddled in on themselves in misery.
It’s far below freezing throughout most of the country, certainly in our University town – why on earth are these children wandering about half naked?
Mere hours ago, they walked and lived with us. A tragic end.
“Wal-mart… do they like make walls there?” – Paris Hilton
Walmart is still not my favorite place to shop. I admit there are numerous variations ‘twixt the Walmarts of different areas, but I really do believe our local one to be sort of horrid. It’s disorganized and sometimes dirty, the salespeople have been unhelpful and often rude, and I’ve had several bad experiences with product quality. But I suspect the real reason I avoid Walmart is because every time I enter its doors I meet the oddest people.
Saturday, Sadie needed someone to run her to the store for some last minute shopping and the place she requested was Walmart. So, off we went to print pictures for Pieter – still in Belgium and France for another three months, snag laundry detergent, and shampoo. We exchanged stores of odd adventures we’d each had in Walmart and crossed our fingers that we wouldn’t have one that day. We made it through without incident until we were waiting in line and the great sliding doors of freedom were within reach…
When from behind us a man piped up.
“Do you see that baby?”
We both swiveled from the drooling child sitting in the cart in front of us to the man behind us. He was in a wheelchair and had a pleasant face, but he must have been on several medications affecting his pigmentation because his skin was a strange color between gray and dark blue. He was staring at the baby, Sadie and I alternatively.
“Yes, sir,” I answered his question.
“Well, do you know that I can make babies talk to me in my mind?”
“Oh?” Sadie and I kept our eyebrows from climbing, but just barely.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I just made that baby wave at me.”
Cheap produce, home goods, and theology, all at a low price!
We both glanced at the child in question, still gnawing on the handrail of the cart and not paying much attention to anyone.
“See, I think they remember me from before they were born when they hear me in their mind.”
“Really?” I asked, not really knowing what else to say.
“Yes. You know, like the Horse Whisperer. Or the Dog Whisperer! I like that show. Look! The baby’s waving at me again!”
It wasn’t.
We politely bade him good day and proceeded to checkout. Walmart is a bizarre place!
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus
Will someone please tell me which of the jealous domestic appliance gods we’ve angered recently so that we can sacrifice the appropriate item (sock to washing machine, milk to back of fridge, etc.) and get on with it?
Wednesday when I got home, I noticed it was a bit chilly but I had to quick turnabout to go pick up J. so I just adjusted the temperature and figured all would be well by the time we got back.
For all their drool-worthy abs, chiseled chins, and muscled glory, the domestic gods are cruel masters.
Foolish, foolish C.. You know the domestic gods hate you. When we got home it was colder – our furnace had thrown up its hands in defeat and was slumped uselessly in its closet, clicking and wheezing occasionally but for all of our pleading, threatening, and dancing around cabalistic signs and fires…nothing. The handyman was duly summoned.
I had to take off work as J. had class so I went home…and waited. He was an hour late and then only stayed about 10 minutes, the ultimate underlying problem being that our furnace is from the Neolithic Age. Our pilot light, clogged with the grime of ages, mastodon hairs, ash from Vesuvius, and soot from the Industrial Revolution, can’t stay lit very long. The quick fix is a thorough cleaning – which the handyman advocated but was, of course, too busy to do that evening. I smiled tightly, pulled out my diary, and briskly inquired when he would be available next. He stuttered, “Saturday,” and I wrote it down firmly in dark, indelible strokes.
The real solution is, of course, and entirely new unit. And since apparently we’re not the only people in our building to have our furnaces give out recently, I’m hoping the landlord will fork over the funds. In the meantime we’re guarding our small, flickering light like Vestal Virgins and wearing sweatshirts to bed.
“-I do not think it means what you think it means.” – The Princess Bride, 1987
The word of the day, class, is “profiling.”
A member of the media came to the office the other day in a rage because his daughter had been given a parking ticket. Apparently she was using his press/media pass to park wherever she wanted, which is all sorts of against the rules. We tend to frown upon people claiming privileges that don’t belong to them, see yesterday’s post on decency. But he came in all aflame with righteous indignation…and spoiled it all by lying and saying he was the one who had received the ticket and how dare we ticket him, and he would go to the administration with this –
Red cut him off by telling him that his daughter had already come in and admitted to misusing the pass, which took him aback, but he recovered swiftly and threw out an accusation.
“So, you’re ticketing my daughter for using my pass? That’s profiling!”
Dear, dear. We seemed to have missed the point, haven't we?
Cut to yesterday in J.’s class, scene: a discussion of hiring and management. A young man for some reason failed to grasp the problem in a case study of a manager refusing to hire a qualified applicant because he didn’t feel that “a timid Asian woman” would be able to handle the rigors of the job. (Ah, shades of the Annual Anti-Harassment Seminar…) J. pulled his jaw off the floor and tried to explain the many, many errors of this man’s thinking but to no avail. His classmate came back with, “So a woman should automatically be hired even if she can’t do the job? That’s profiling!”
“As a connoisseur of human folly, I would have thought you impatient to be savoring these delights.” “Of some delights, sir, I believe a little goes a long way.” – Pride and Prejudice, 1995
You may not believe it, ducklings, from all of my snarkiness and eyebrow lifting, but I really do like people. I enjoy meeting people and making friends. And I’m often deeply impressed at the heights human nature can climb to. Alternatively, I’m often deeply annoyed by how low some people can sink.
My trouble is (as per usual) that I work at a police department, the nature of which means that at least 50% of the people coming through our doors are in some sort of trouble. The other 50% have caused some sort of trouble, and so don’t help my attitude.
Believe it or not, this sort of excellence isn't required. Although laudable.
Here’s my beef. I have discovered, through 2+ years of observation of this sort of thing, that it is extremely easy to be a fairly good person. No, really. It’s a piece of cake! Don’t take what’s yours, don’t say what isn’t true, don’t go out of your way to be obnoxious, and have some sort of basic theoretical understanding that your actions affect others. It really is that simple. You may still get a little moody, you may still tell the occasional exaggerated story, you may still have a no-good-very-bad-day when the universe conspires against you and you lash out, but to all intents and purposes you will be a Decent Human Being.
And yet, in spite of the simplicity of this solution, there seems to be whole hordes of people incapable of being Decent Human Beings. They are determined to be jerks.
Take for instance the late incident of a man whose daughter got into a minor car accident with a foreigner. The daughter gave false/faulty insurance information and when the foreigner, who assumed the error was his, asked politely for the correct information, Daddy told him a series of lies about insurance in America, and ordered him not to contact his daughter again. All to keep from reporting his daughter at fault in the accident, apparently.
Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect. – W. Clement Stone
Dear Salesperson Who Thinks You Are Clever,
You’re not. You are approximately the four hundred twenty-seventh person this week to try to get access to an administrator by claiming to be a close personal friend. I am not quite an idiot, thank you, and I have heard every single one of the techniques you will try to get around me.
“He’ll see me, he asked me to come in,” you say. I doubt that, since he’s been on vacation most of this week and plans on being out of the office for a good chunk of the next as well.
“He’s a very old friend of mine, but I don’t know how to get in touch with him,” you try next. That’s funny. I’ve got phone numbers, email, blogs, Facebook, googling, and any number of ways to get in touch with my “very old friends.”
“Don’t you know who I am?!” you cry in desperation. No. And since it’s my job to most relevant people, that ought to tell you something.
See, Small Dog may be a minor secretary way down on the totem pole, but she’s good at her job. And it would take a far cleverer salesman than you to get past the gates. You may leave your card and contact information like everybody else.
Small Dog Syndrome 