Wednesday, October 29, 2003

MEREDIEM IMPONDERABILIS
Doesn't this look fancy? First I called it "Imponderables", but then imponderable didn't seem like a word, even in a leaned-down kind of way. So I made it Latin. I don't know why. Oh, I know why. I looked up "Imponderable" in my handy-dandy online dictionary, and found the Latin word. I thought it was a sign. I bet some Roman Legionnaire is pretty impressed right now. Great Caesar's ghost, I digress. Therefore I am.

But. Over the lunch hour. Thing number one that made me go Hmmmmm.......
I had to pick up TinyTuna from school because it's a half-day. Now, keep in mind it is a half-day for all elementary schools in TunaVille, so it's probably upwards of one thousand children all getting out of school at precisely 12:13pm. (I don't get that time part either. I've stopped asking.) So, fact one is one thousand children = hundreds and hundreds of cars to pick up said children all at the same time. Now, it is also fall in mitten country, which means thousands and thousands of dead leaves as far as the eye can see and the foot can scuffle (weather permitting). TunaVille residents are allowed to take their dead leaves and push them all to the edge of their property. Then, the giant leaf-sucking machine drives by and sucks up the leaves for mulch or whatever. Some TunaVille residents don't like to pile leaves on their grass for fear that it will kill the grass that already looks like crap because of the lack of rain all summer. So these residents rake their leaves into the street. It usually isn't too big of a problem unless there is a lot of rain, which makes everything a slippery leafy mess.

So. Back to our fact. Kids everywhere. Cars everywhere. As I pull into the subdivision where the school is located, the scene looks like something out of Nightmare on Elm-Leaf Street. Every single intersection has an enormous pile of leaves, blocking 3/4 of all traffic lanes. There must have been thirty-five leaf piles scattered all over the neighborhood smack-dab in the middle of an intersection. And Goober, on his backhoe, is busy making more leaf piles. All I can guess is the TunaVille City Council did not recognize this week as "Do Not Push Leaves Into Big Piles On Half-Days" week, because if any idiot had taken two seconds to look at the calendar, they would have recognized the potential chaos.

Thing number two that made me go Hmmmmm.......
The setting: Lunch at a grocery store lunch counter / salad bar area.
The time: Lunch time.
Activity Number One: Push chairs around. Ignore people eating lunch.
Activity Number Two: Push chairs around. Ignore people eating lunch.

Activity Number One was performed by a two year old. Activity Number Two was performed by an adult, presumed to be a parent of said child. These two activities went on for forty-five minutes without the courtesy of an intermission. The only difference between the two activities was the child was ignoring everyone in the room as chairs went indiscriminately careening into nearby table legs and shins. After pushing the chairs back to their original location, the parent would ignore everyone in the room (including the child) and eat lunch. On and on and on it went. As annoying as it was, after awhile, I was rooting for the kid. Go on. Do it again. Will she move all those chairs back just ONE more time? Yep. she did.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm
Leaned Down.
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