What the Neighbours Think

Last night I was at a school council event; I'm on the executive and we had a last social evening at a roadhouse sort of restaurant. It was half price margarita night (and don't think I don't have the urge to write "nite"... it was that kind of place) and there were all these different flavours like mango and strawberry and raspberry and who knows what else. Made from powdered sugar and bright colouring and flavouring, the mix is added to ice cubes and tequila and put into a blender, then poured into a water glass rimmed with salt or sugar, as appropriate. I had a regular lime one because I like lime and tequila. Everyone else said that mine was the only kind of margarita they didn't like, and I guess this is because it isn't sweet enough? I didn't comment, thinking it was rude to pass judgement so early in the evening.

The menu was full of deep-fried, fat-filled goodness: potato skins (ordered), supreme nachos with lots of cheese and ground beef (ordered), bruschetta (ordered x 2), chicken wings (ordered, and luckily they come with carrots and celery sticks) and the like. No one asked if anyone was vegetarian, I guess because only weirdos don't eat meat. (Don't get me wrong. I eat meat, I just don't eat a lot of it, especially in the summer. For dinner at home last night we had had red rice, lentils, soybeans and a vegetable medley, including some swiss chard that I had to thin out from the garden. No meat, and luckily, everyone at home seems to have survived the night.) At one council meeting where we had to decide on fundraising strategies, we chose to continue selling chicken from a local poultry company, because after all, "Who doesn't like chicken?" I did point out that perhaps the people who don't eat meat don't like chicken, but that elicited the response: There are so few of those people. In my head I responded, "And clearly they should be eliminated from the population," but didn't say it, because I am discussing alternative eating strategies with a Brick Wall. A loud Brick Wall, and one with perhaps less brainpower than the average Brick Wall, but a Brick Wall nonetheless.

I do realize that the previous set of words is not a sentence, thank you.

Anyway. We are drinking margaritas, eating high-fat "food" (don't for a second think that I turned my nose up at it. I ate everything, and as yet another 14%m.f. sour cream- and orangey-cheddar cheese-coated potato skin passed my lips, I considered that I might be shortening my life span considerably.) and discussing various aspects of children and schooling and merits of the teachers, and whether or not we're actually going to get the money from the provincial government to build a new school, and then the Brick Wall starts asking about the transition from grade eight to high school.

"What kind of track will B choose? Does he have to know what he wants to be? How does he know that? I can't imagine having to choose a track (either academic or applied) in grade nine. We never had to do that."

I would have argued that you definitely had to do that, because I had to do that and I am >10 years older than you. At this point the brick wall status of this person had sunk into my head, and I knew that resistance was futile. You aim high, you either succeed or you take another path. Always aim high. Learn to push yourself into thinking beyond what's right in front of you. Take the high road. Don't be so stupid.

"I just cannot understand people who go to university and who spend eight years there and then don't do any work that is related to what they studied in university. This doesn't make sense, why would they go? About 90% of the people I went to high school with went to university, and spent all this time there, and then did nothing with it. At least if they went to college they got a job." This person, despite the fact that she's known me for a couple of years, has no idea what my former position was or what I do now, or how many years I attended university wasting my precious time.

(In Canada, college is technical school/trade school, where university is ... well, university. In the U.S., college is the undergraduate portion of university. We don't normally split up undergrad as college and grad school as grad school, it's all university. Law, dentistry and medicine are also undergraduate programs, but they fall under "professional programs" within the university system. I think in the U.S. these are considered graduate programs.)

The principal of the school was with us, so she tried, very patiently, to explain the difference between university and college, especially because each of her sons has chosen a different path. I was becoming quite tired of trying to explain anything.

"And another thing I don't get. I can't figure out people who don't get married until they're 35, or don't have kids until they're 40. I got married at 23, had my first kid at 24, and then had three more. I don't get this 'waiting' stuff. What's to wait for?"

I couldn't stop myself here, so I said, "Well, sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to marry until later. I had a child when I was 38, and another one six weeks before I turned 40." No comment, although the brain seems to be trying to incorporate this information. Here is someone who did not have a child until she was 38. Here is someone who .... oh darn, I can't understand this. Have I embarrassed myself? No, I'm sure I haven't. I'll just say something else here to cover for the fact that I might have said something out of line. "It worked for you then. You had two kids."

I will give BW the benefit of the doubt. Here is a woman who was brought up in a well-off Italian family, who left home when she got married, who has never had to look for a job because she and her husband work for her father, who is in a panic because she is supposed to go to Italy for 10 days with her mother, grandmother, sisters and cousins, and can't imagine going. Then again, if my husband said something like, "It'll be okay honey, ten days isn't long. I won't even have to do laundry in the course of ten days..." Four Boys at Home,

I should point out that the evening wasn't entirely like this, but mostly it was. I was terribly bored for most of it, and while that might make you ask why I stayed, it made me ask what I was doing on a committee with people who couldn't see past their own faces. Honestly, I was waiting for the next topic of conversation: Why Isn't Everyone Catholic? but I left before that happened. It was very interesting from a backwards perspective, but not that interesting...