White Boy at the Black Sorority Meeting (part two)

Continued from part 1

This is the second installation in a two-part FCeriseN (because that's the only letter that will make a soft "S" sound). To get caught up, go back and read part one or check out the spark note version in the next paragraph. Good choice; I was going to go with the spark notes too.

In part one (you have yet another chance to click the link!), Reginald decided that my social life needed a hormone injection and decided to bring me to the epicenter of ethnic and estrogen pride (the social equivalents of diethylhexyl and polyisobutylene, click here if you're not a nerd. Gotcha! You can actually read the explained joke here, but then again "a joke explained is a joke disdained"). Reginald took me to a local spring of vivacious ethnically secure females: a meeting of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. I had just made contact when the FCN post-size limit was enforced and I had to split my tome into two parts (send complaints here).

Did I mention that Reginald is buff? His chest and arms are sculpted and toned like a Greek god. His work on his body had rendered his torso a piece of work. My physique -- detailed now and again on these illustrative pages -- has the appeal of a slightly masticated worm, albeit with some definition in its pectoralis major. Yes, that is definition. Sometimes definition looks like flab when it gets tired of being defined all the time. No, I do not need any additional articles of clothing to support my pectoralis. Thank you for offering. Neither do I appreciate that your subtle insinuations are slowly eroding my tender body image. Stop it, please. People like you are why I need to spend thousands of dollars on professional psychological therapy. Next to Reginald, I admit, I look like a pre-pubescent youth with post-pubescent pecs; an overgrown schoolboy, who's biceps have yet to catch up with his imagination.

I don't know why I just described myself that way. It's really very unflattering. For me it creates a feeling similar to what Heidi Montag must feel when she opens the National Enquirer: "That's not true; how awful of them to print that." Except in Heidi's case, she has invited the criticism by prancing around the known world in just slightly more clothing than a chimpanzee would wear at the zoo. And in my case, I wrote the unflattering comments about myself. Actually, now that I think about it, the two feelings are completely dissimilar, but I was able to mention Heidi Montag, so perhaps it was worth it. In fact, these last two paragraphs were an entirely unnecessary self-effacement. It's also something I'll have to bring up with my therapist.

So, back at the black sorority meeting, I was struggling to come up with something to talk about. Buff Reginald flitted around with an elusive social grace, twittering with the fairer sex and returning their bavarderie like Roger Federer returns tennis balls, minus the spin and long hair. At first I tried to be still and look innocent, but that never works. Then I tried to be invisible. I imagined I was a character from Tolkien, sliding my finger into a ring and disappearing. Someone asked me if I was okay, so I stopped doing that.

That's when the food arrived. I may not always be the greatest people person, but I'm a great food person. You throw me a plate with a little grub -- nothing fancy, mind you; I intend to survive almost exclusively on microwave victuals if my love life continues at its laggard pace -- and I am occupied like a toddler with an abacus.

Sometime when I was eating, a woman named "Natasha" started talking to me. I happened to know that her name meant "birthday" -- just something I read somewhere when I should have been doing something else -- and the news surprised her! How can you have a name and not know the meaning of it? What if you were named something terrible like "milktoast" or "hebetudinous"? Wouldn't you want to know so you could skedaddle down to the courthouse and get that changed? Other names I turned down after discovering their meanings were "daft," "torpid" and "banana." "Hebetudinous" was on my shortlist for a firstborn until I found out what it meant, now it takes a back burner -- well behind "milktoast."

Natasha makes a lot of sense for a name, since most people are named on their birthday. It's a wonder more people aren't named that. Natasha must have appreciated my insight because she laughed and we started talking.

Long story abbreviated, I met a bunch of Natasha's friends, all AKA members. They all wanted to know what their names meant, so I made some terms up and tried not to offend people. Just when I was nearing the end of my line of jokes (it doesn't take very long), the music came on. It was Lady GaGa's "Just Dance." And so we started dancing.

Just so everyone knows. I am an expert at dancing. It's like I've been dancing -- seriously dancing -- ever since I watched a particular video on YouTube. Not Evolution of Dance, silly. 100 million people have seen that. It's so unoriginal. I saw a 3 minute video that gives a whole bunch of new moves. And less than a million people have seen it, which makes me, you know, one in a million. Now I am sharing it with you. Here it is:




My personal favorite is the "Wii remote," but I've got most of the moves down pat. And let me tell you what, they were a hit at the AKA sorority meeting. I was so popular. I didn't want to leave. Reginald came and said we had to go, but I wanted to try out "The Dictator" again and Natasha asked me to teach her "The Bus Driver."

Reginald is stronger than me (see, the buff paragraph did serve a purpose) and he was able to wrest me away. But I really want to go back next year and show off some more moves. I've been practicing...

White boy at the black sorority meeting (part one)

It's the kind of thing that should never happen: Oil and water mixing, Tom Brady getting hurt, Lance Armstrong and Ashley Olsen getting together, Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger marrying, Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger divorcing, Google losing market share. Not that it never happens, but, like "No Country for Old Men" winning an Oscar, the odds are admittedly strong against the occurrence. So when it happens, whatever it is, it's newsworthy.

The "it" tense is getting old, cryptic and confusing, so let me put the hillbilly kabosh (not nearly as sexy as it sounds) on "it" and introduce a few more facts that'll allow me to open up my English playbook.

Reginald set up a social engagement for me. Seeing how bleak and uninteresting my social life is ("Hey, wanna study with me?"), he pledged to find an entertaining way for me to get out of the house and meet some new people. Reginald didn't tell me what the event was or what kind of people I would be meeting; he just drove us to a park near a local university - not the one I attend, thank goodness - and advised, after studying his timepiece, that the "party" was "just about to get started."

As we walked away from our car toward a well decorated "Welcome Alpha Kappa Alpha West Coast Chapter" sign, I wondered why Reginald was so excited about this evening. I did not, at that moment, know that AKA was one of the nation's largest black sororities, nor did I, at that moment, particularly care. I have never been heavily involved with either Greek or ethnic "life" (as if membership in fraternity defines one's life), and I didn't think Reginald was the frat house type.

Before going on, there will be people who, no matter how many times they read this paragraph, will accuse me and this note of being a racist. The mere mention of ethnic differences pegs me -- an ethnic majority (depending on how much you blur things) -- as prejudiced and biased against other people groups. Folks, we really need to get past all this. We are living in a post-racial world. The time for allegations of bigotry and ethnocentrism has past. We have elected Barack O'Bama as our President. There is no more room for hatred when we have chosen "hope" as our leader. I, for one, have released the hatred and bigotry of the past and embraced with joyful emotion the reality of perfect egalitarianism. Allegations of racism and questions about my latent hatred are dated, wrong and unnecessarily remind us all of a time when equality sat in the back of the bus instead of the President's motorcade. Stop living in an 11/3 world, people! Racism is dead. O'Bama has vanquished it.

If anything, this post is more misogynistic then it is racist. The next few paragraphs will have a couple of disparaging remarks toward women that should get me in trouble with Mommy G and...wait for it...the female writers here at FCN. The American people snubbed Hillary and thus all women, so go ahead and send us an email about our unliberated view of femininity. Tell us how we hate all women and use that silly euphemism for our A-shirts that says more about your fantasies than our violence. But before clicking the send button on that hate tome, know that this post was written during a lecture about cross-ethnic sensitivity in a post-Caucasian world (such a turn on!), so that might be a point in my favor depending on how we're counting score.

But enough covering for my sensitive parts.

You could smell the estrogen before you could see it. As Reginald and I drew near, we saw that the park was teaming with overweight African-American females. It looked like a scene from Baldwin Hills, except that all the attractive people were removed and everyone added thirty pounds in unflattering places. A couple of women in particular added a good many more than thirty pounds.

As far as the eye could see there was not a single male. Nor were there any married men. As far as the eye could see there was not a single white person. Nor, for that matter, were any ethnicities represented other than various strains of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

I stared at Reginald. What have you dragged me into? Reginald was unphased. In fact, he barely broke stride as he shouted the four syllable name of someone he recognized and waived me on to meet his friends.

I could list on one hand the number of things I have in common with your average sorority member and, after spending an evening with the lovely members of Alpha Kappa Alpha (they were really quite friendly folks once I started chatting), I can still count the number on one hand, but I use fewer fingers.

To be continued...

Part the Seventh: She has 'Crush' on you

It was like connecting positive and negative energy, but Luce and I were finally able to reconnect and set up a reconciliatory date. She had scheduling conflicts for most of my available times (school, a babysitting commitment and a best friend's birthday party were all pesky obstacles) so I ended up taking a couple hours off work so we could meet for a leisurely lunch and then walk around a local park.

If you're new to this tragic but all too real tale of failed attempts at love, you can check out the sordid and choppy history of Luce and my relationship here. Or, if you're the kind of person who flips to the back of the book to read the annotated version, it suffices to say that Luce and I have never clicked. I've either been too late, too dumb, too condemning or too verbose. Luce, on the other hand, has been everything; she's a charming date and beautiful companion. I've been borderline comatose.

Before heading out for date number four (or three, depending on whether your definition of a date includes an actual meeting), I sat down with a number of guy friends to put together a strategy. In retrospect, I probably should have had a girl on the consulting team, but I preferred the brand of advice my male friends provided.

Before asking for their input, I laid out my situation clearly, saying that my sensitive ego would not take another throw-it-down rejection. I needed to go into this meeting with a crash the board's mentality and approach Luce with a full court press. I wasn't going to be on the sidelines anymore.

OK, enough with the basketball idioms. Maybe I should add a girl to my team of advisers...

The guys and I reviewed my past experience and weighed reader comments for input. We were pretty sure that Luce's sister was in the military, which ruled out jdb and Adrialien's theory of a familial stand-in (the Luce of Part the Sixth had hair that was beyond regulation length). We also rejected matchmaker's input because it involved going to see a chick flick. In the end we settled on a variant of Frederic's idea and decided to strap on some metaphorical peacock feathers.

Throughout the date, I would be a bold, courageous beast in human form. By the end of our conversation, Luce would know every exploit, achievement and success I had ever caused or been a part of. I would pin her ears back with wordy tales of mighty victories, some embellished for grandeur and all told with wide eyes and guttural voice. I would spare no exaggeration and pull no punches. I would be Leonidas against the Persians, Achilles against the Trojans and William Wallace against the English. By the time I got through detailing my credentials of valor, Luce's crush would be that much more resolved and her affection secured.

"Spartans? Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"

The end of our meeting involved some manly shouting, chest thumping and an arm wrestling match and one of my friends twisted his ankle while demonstrating a Bruce Lee wall-chop, but I was in the right frame of mind for a date as I hopped into my car and drove to the sandwich shop were Luce and I were meeting.

Luce was there when I arrived and, after we exchanged brief pleasantries, she felt a need to explain and justify her previous outburst. I put her at ease with the following reply:

"You know, Luce, a weaker man might have taken offense at your comments. A wuss or the guys who trim their eyebrows might have a hard time coping with such a letdown. I'll bet you Ewan McGregor would still be reeling. But not me. I once faced a whole room full of angry, condemning women. They were mad and I still don't know what I did. To this day, it doesn't bother me a bit. Not a bit. Your words were a drop in bucket compared to the kind of estrogen-filled hate I've been on the business end of. A drop in the bucket."

I think it worked, because she grinned while I was talking and shook her head slightly during the more fantastic portions. She even laughed when I mentioned Ewan McGregor and I made a mental note to thank Reginald for the line.

I didn't get a chance to be macho again until Luce had almost finished her sandwich. She looked down at her plate and said something about how "Mr. Pickles," makes large portions. Deep down inside, I think she was fishing for a compliment about her figure, but for me it was an opportunity to brag:

"Hah! This is nothing. How many calories do you think this sandwich has? 1,200? 1,500?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, I once ate almost 3,000 calories in ten minutes. I wasn't even hungry. I was like Takeru Kobayashi at the Thanksgiving table. Just boom; down the hatch. It was all gone before you could say "anorexia." They called me the Alimentary Vacuum and I considered a few sponsorship offers before staying an amateur. In fact, I'm going to have another sandwich. You want one?"

I don't think Luce knew who Takeru Kobayashi was and she looked more disgusted than anything at my comments.

Despite the fact that I was stuffed to the esophagus with a Mr. Pickles sandwich that was, admittedly, quite large, I walked over to the counter and ordered another. Food was never so painful.

Our walk in the park started off very well. It was a beautiful day and we made small talk for the first few minutes of our promenade. Then Luce brought up Reginald.

Luce wanted to make sure I didn't feel competition from my no-good house mate. She felt the time they were spending together might be perceived as more than friendship and she assured me the only reason she went out with him was because she felt sorry for his plight. I wanted to ask what Reginald's plight was, but my desire to appear strong lead me to feign confidence:

"You know, a lesser man might be concerned, but seriously, I've got this situation covered. Did I ever tell you the story about the guy at the place who tried to steal the girl from me? No? Well, he, you know, ended up...looking...less manly after I, uh, you know, finished with him. The girl's serving some time for an unrelated incident right now so you don't have to worry about her, you know, interfering with us. In fact, you could go out with the guy if you felt sorry for him and I wouldn't take that as a slight. I might even beat him up again although his reconstructive surgeon might not appreciate that..."

The more I spoke, the more ridiculous it sounded and I knew my face reflected my personal feelings of incredulity, so eventually I just shut up. My voice trailed off some and that's when I heard Luce's response.

"Why can't you just be the same person all the time?" She asked with a very feminine fire in here eyes. "One date you're Mr. Nice Guy and now you're trying on Macho Man...just give me the straight story. Don't be an arrogant tool. Be yourself. You don't have to try to impress me. You impress me; when you try you just look impotent and weak. And Ewan McGregor? That sounds like something from Reginald's playbook. Look, I know you're trying, but this isn't working. Call me when you are ready to be yourself."

With that, Luce marched to her car and, after a couple tries at the starter, chug-chugged her Bronco out of the parking lot.

I walked over to the playground set and began banging my head against a protruding monkey bar. How could I have been so idiotic? What could have been a great afternoon was ruined by my own meddling. What was that she'd called me? An arrogant tool? Ouch. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been called that. And my stomach hurt like something fierce. Why did I have to eat that second sandwich? Why had I taken time off work for this torture?

Maybe Luce was right. Maybe I should try a date without any particular "strategy" and just wing it. I could try being spontaneously attractive. Or, maybe I could try coloring my hair or growing a mustache or something subtle but radical and very "me," whatever that is. How do you try to be yourself, when you've been working so hard to be something else?

I don't know. I definitely want to think about it before I call her again.

Part Two: 'Tomorrow’s Happiness Begins Today'

Since last week’s discovery that the beautiful girl in my philosophy class likes to spend time with the campus nerd, I have devoted countless mental calories to devising a way to be noticed by her in a positive way. Most of my ideas involve great heights, flame or Marxist propaganda (that was Reginald's idea, actually) and none of them are very positive. But because I haven’t risked any of them, a relationship with Carrie remains a possibility, albeit a distant one. By the same token, she still hasn’t noticed me.

During one of the breaks, I followed the nerd into the restroom and got a good look at him while at the wash stand. The nerd was looking at his own comely features in the mirror and adjusting his dry, keratinized hair with an air of vanity and self assurance. I sized him up while letting the tepid water flow easily over my outstretched palms.

He was small. Maybe 5’7” or 5’8”. His shoulders had an inward slump that spoke of more hours in a virtual world than a weight room. He did not look athletic, but had a fashionable pair of jeans that made turned his unshaped body into something mildly resembling the masculine form. He weighed between 120 and 130 pounds; a meager presence in the large restroom. His was the body type that made a small “poof” when entering the water in “cannon ball” form. His voice when we exchanged pleasantries was flat and high pitched. His diction was heavily weighed by a Castro Street lisp that severely detracted from his manliness. His shirt was nondescript, black with some artistic white designs. He was exactly the kind of guy you could look at and then forget a moment later.

But Carrie hadn’t forgotten him. After class they were walking together with a closeness that befits lifelong friends, not college freshmen two weeks into their first semester of higher education.

Maybe, I thought, my feelings were a banal jealously, a perception that this girl was somehow a prize that I could beat out the other guys to “have.”

But no, a quick examination of my priorities revealed my intentions were pure. This girl was fresh off the farm, a naive and innocent presence on a hardened academic surface. She didn’t know what she was getting into or the ideas the nerd might be getting into his nondescript head. She needed protection. My protection.

The nerd, on the other hand, was probably a battle hardened player with more love tales than Alexander the Great had war anecdotes. He probably made a lifestyle of getting women to fall for him and then crushing their uncorrupted hearts. His was a utilitarian existence and it was my lot to save one more victim from his grasp.

Then another thought hit me like the cold water of “polar bear club:” Why do women, especially those as beautiful as Carrie, get involved with the emasculated and uninteresting? Why don’t women always find the strong, handsome men’s men, the real alphas of the pack and leave the weak to their ugly counterparts?

Maybe you women in the audience can help me dissect this and provide a little light on this very complicated question: why do relationships like Robert and Stephanie happen? (Note that I did not just say that).

Anyway, at class yesterday, I was trying to think of something to say to Carrie, some way of starting a conversation. My position in class makes it awkward to lean over and make a casual remark, so I need to have something substantive in order to justify the effort of communicating. All the obvious things (weather, parking situation, cafeteria food) seemed too trite and a question about her experiences in college so far might seem contrived. I thought about asking her opinion of Fred Thompson's candidacy, but weighed the possibility that she had no idea who Thompson is and the eventual embarrassment my explaining might produce as sound arguments against such a query.

I sat at my desk, scribbling possible questions on the palm of my hand for a long stretch of our professor’s discussion of Leviathan and Thomas Hobbes. In the end, I just left without saying anything, biding my time for a future encounter.

At lunch after class, I discovered my fortune cookie was broken into small pieces. It had suffered some violent settling in transit and was now a collection of fortune crumbs. I was disturbed.

Now would be a good time to defend the use of fortune cookies as a moral and life guide. Mommy G pointed out that there are several far better ways to get life advice and cautioned me against putting my faith in a fortune cookie. The implicit message in her caution is that superstitious tools like fortune cookies can cause more harm than good. Mommy G is, of course, right - Mom's rarely aren't - but I do think there is some limited role a tiny slip of inked paper with a quaint quip can play in our lives and occasionally in our decision making.

When the suppliers of fortune cookies for the Chinese restaurant sit down to start chopping out their advice, they look inward to some discrete location around the belly button, in search of enlightened humor. When they don't find lint, the nuggets of truth they pull from their hidden troves are wrapped in a slightly sweet sugar and wheat based product and baked. Fully baked; through and through. Anyone who puts that much effort into getting a secret message into a diner's greasy fingers deserves an ear. In some small way, fortune cookies are, then, a message from God himself; a sovereign protected correspondence with the Almighty. Our Maker guides these bits of molded dough into our hands and, after a salty meal with plenty of soy sauce and conversation, communicates through the fortune.

I mean, if Leonidas listened to the dieing messenger at Marathon, I'll read my fortune cookie.

Fortune cookies are life's way of laughing at itself; what they lack in verisimilitude they make up in jest.

OK, enough verbose summations; my fortune cookie read:

TOMORROW’S HAPPINESS BEGINS TODAY

Goodness! My meteorologist could have told me that. All those tiny China-men were waisting their time. Still, perhaps I could have been more assertive in the Carrie situation. Then again, maybe these dough wrapped messages are full of it, clichéd verbal sophistication notwithstanding. Yes, that was a drug reference.

Smile, You're On Google Earth!

The other night a couple of friends and I dragged our sleeping bags outside and, roughly a hundred feet from our comfortable beds, lay down on some uneven cement to watch the stars and sleep in the great outdoors. The material we laid our heads on was designed more for aesthetics than comfort, but our goal in spending an entire night outdoors was so pure and altruistic that we scoffed at all insinuation that a little hard ground could deter us.

When we first started making plans for this outdoor night adventure, I had expected the party to include Reginald, who often tags along in unpleasant activities if his friends are doing them. In fact, Reginald was all ready to go, extra stuffed sleeping bag and all, until we told him there would be no tent overhead. He insisted, for several argumentative quarter hours, that a tent is an absolute must for any outdoor adventure and that he wouldn't go along without it. We intoned that a tent defeated the purpose of star-gazing and invited him to stay inside while we roughed the outdoors.

Only after we implied that we would be going outdoors no matter what did Reginald get a wide-eyed look in his earnest commie eyes and beg us not to go out alone.

"It's Google; they'll see you." Reginald whispered the words as if Google had a sound detection device in the room with us. Then he ran into the room he appropriated some years ago, shut the door and, as is his custom, pulled the comforter over his head.

Are you reading this, Luce? He pulled the comforter over his head, like a small child; like a scared papoose in need of his Sacajawea. Reginald's afraid of Google! A search engine with fewer employees than that little town in Iowa that John Edwards was campaigning in yesterday, and he runs for his blankie! Poor Reggie!

Ok, back to the story.

Only slightly discombobulated by Reginald's behavior, my friends and I made our way outside and lay down on the hard cement. Small pieces of gravel had accumulated between the decorative cracks in the deck and I had to wiggle for several minutes before finding a place to rest that didn't stab me like Brutus. Then, if I could ignore the jostling of my friends, I gazed at the wonder of the star-scape in tranquility until an appendage started to fall asleep.

The first part of the night followed a seemingly endless cycle of adjust, pain and readjust, until I discovered I could live with something poking into my back or no feeling in the left part of my body. The affliction was severe, but I could cope.

At about 2:37 AM - for reasons that will soon become apparent, I checked my watch to memorialize the moment - a series of bright flashes filled the sky. I saw the first of what looked like small sulfur-fueled explosions come up from the western horizon and then ease gently overhead, creating a colorful line in the sky. One by one the tiny flash bulbs entered my vision and then slowly eased away.

"Hey, did you see that?" I shook my friends to see if they had noticed the spectacle. Their murmured replies expressed disgruntlement at the rude awakening and the fact that they had missed the lights in the western sky.

Maybe, I thought, the explosions were the result of an overactive imagination fueled to eccentric ramblings by the hard surface upon which I was laying. But I've never had these kinds of dreams before, even in past rough excursions. Maybe it was some terrible accident like a plane crash or space satellite failure. Or perhaps I had witnessed something I shouldn't have seen, like a missile test, alien invasion or the posthumous rise of Anna Nicole Smith. In fact I couldn't think of any good reasons why the explosions weren't all of those - maybe even at the same time.

Later that morning, after a pained levitation exercise and a shuffle into our house that was more fitting for Bill Walton, I sat down in front of Steve to resolve a hunch. Something Reginald had said made me wonder if those late night flashes were generated by the worlds' most fantastic search engine.

I ordered my computer browser to Google Earth and entered my address. Then I zoomed in as far as the pixels would allow and strained with bloodshot eyes to make out the image. There, clearly impregnated into my computer screen, was the image of three teenagers lounging outside a large house, at least the house looked pretty large zoomed all the way in.

I couldn't believe it! I had made the Google pictorial! Reginald was right! How in the world Reginald was able to figure out that Google was taking pictures that night is a query too distressing to even contemplate. But he had, and they did.

I wanted to scold Reginald for not telling me more sincerely, so I could have made some signs beforehand or had a Google photo party, but instead of going to see him, I printed the image and showed it to my friends, both of whom had an attack of the privacies and became hysterical.

My new picture makes me very proud. I sincerely wish I could show them to you without completely violating my personal privacy. Regardless, the pic shows that Google and I have a connection; we picked the same night to do our thing. And the photo really isn't that bad, either. If you squint just right, the pixels align to almost make it look like I'm smiling. Almost.

You did what?

As most of you are probably unaware, I recently procured gainful employment. In an effort to reform my derelict self and prove to the world that I can actually perform meaningful and productive labor tasks at the directive of an employer, I joined the ranks of the California work force. A couple weeks ago, I began my position as Assistant Cereal Technician for General Mills (Or is it Assistant to the Cereal Technician? I get the two confused).

I still live with my parents, sleep in my clothes, take extended shaving, shower and general cleanliness vacations, skip class, make crank calls and generally behave like a poorly adjusted derelict, but now I have a job.

My job requires me to stare at hundreds of thousands of bite sized chunks of Wheaties cereal and watch for any irregularities like rampant mold and fungi, discolored clumps, soggy morsels or, and this is particularly disturbing, pieces of uncooked human and animal flesh. If I see anything, I write it down and make a report of my findings in the evening. If the problem is especially egregious, I have a button that sends my boss a signal asking him to come down and scoop the offending material off the conveyor belt. Most of the time, though, he just lets things go by.

My boss is a stickler about alerting the media and he does all the talking when the health inspectors arrive, which has been only once so far, but that visit was precipitated by more job training than I had had to that date. My technical job description reads "batter mixer," but really I'm the last barrier between you and the Wheaties microbes.

Breakfast of champions, my pinkie finger. Don't think about that too hard.

While this new job cuts a terrible blow to my idle time, it has some distinct advantages. First, I get free cereal. I can take home for myself anything I flag as below General Mills' impossibly ignoble quality standards. Second, the pay is really good for a job that has me doing little more than sleeping in front of a conveyor belt.

The strangest thing about working all day is coming home to discover all the things that are different about your life. It's one thing to be away at school during the winter and spring months, but family life can change radically in the weeks before school begins.

The other evening I came home after a slow day at work, pulled my wallet and keys out of my pockets and plopped down at the dinner table to wolf down a few bites of suspicious cereal. Reginald, a family friend who uses our house as shelter from the elements, wondered into the room and made an announcement:

"I spent over fifty bucks today on clothes."

"Goodness, Reginald!" I sputtered from behind a moldy chunk. "That's more money for clothes than I will probably spend the rest of my life, unless of course these jeans tear. What on earth were you getting?"

"A red scarf." My curious look prodded him to continue and he added: "For the YCL meeting on Friday."

"YCL?"

"Young Communists League." I stopped chewing, allowing an unidentified food-like object to slip through my slack jaw and into my bowl with a plop. A communist, in my own house? Was being a communist the in thing these days or was Reginald being an outlier?

"Yeah. Anyway, I'll need your car again tonight."

"Again?" I didn't recall giving permission for the first time.

"Oh, you hadn't heard? I took Luce out the other day. You know Luce, right?" Click, bang. In my mind, Reginald was pasted against the wall with a .45 slug between his eyes. Luce wouldn't go out with me but she would be seen in public with this good for nothing Commie? I would definitely be calling Luce about this. But wait, she'd prohibited that. I was stuck. Reginald and Luce would get married and have a dozen little commies. They would take over the earth and establish a new world order. I would be their Godfather and have to reign in my emotions every time I saw the two of them together.

No longer hungry, I pushed my food aside and answered, "yes, I know Luce."

Reginald forged ahead. "Sorry about your pants."

"What?"

"The grass stains should come off with the application of a little force and detergent, but those grease stains are there to last."

I looked down at my pants and noticed for the first time that my best pair of jeans had been ruined. I hadn't noticed the problem when I put the pair on in the morning but now I could clearly see streaks of green and black laced across them. I'd been at work all day and nobody had said anything.

"Reginald?" I leaped forward to seize the derelict in front of me who had abused my absence to toy with my life. He dodged deftly and ran for the door, swiping my keys with him. A few moments later, I heard the soft roar of my car and the crash of our neighbor's trash can as he sped away, probably to join Luce at the young communists meeting.