Didn’t Graduate

Hadda a girl once, this was during college.

Darkest, longest hair, biggest brownest eyes …

Not that kind of story, whatever kind you thought.

Being stupid (I said this was during college, yes?) I’d no idea … none. Not what it was nor what it cd be and thus not that one though it set me off on the one I have which for better or worse is mine. So, mentioned here just for this: we used’ta have this exchange wherein my journeying to university had come lacking nearly withal the blessing of the state, by completing a sanctioned diploma program in high school. Took the equivalency exam, which a moderately accomplished monkey in the 8th grade could’ve passed — seemed like ‘you might need it’ applied here — but I didn’t, and don’t, have a high school diploma.

Whenever I said that to Rachelle she nearly always rightly mocked me in a gruff approximation of a voice we s’posed to might’ve belonged to an ignorant caveman:

‘heh, heh … snort … I dudn’t grade-jyoo-eight.’

The truth of it was that I didn’t graduate … but I did finish. Prolly coulda done so as an eighth grade simian save for the five-paragraph essay they required to get out of the ninth. I cd’ve written it, sure, but for the blinkered Philistines running the show who wouldn’a have administered it.

And of course the point of the truth is that it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter I snort … dudn’t grade-jyoo-eight … because there I was at USC and, more broadly, no one would care.

One at about that time did — another girl sorta hadda, had in high school said she broke up with me because I hadn’t ‘had my senior year experience’ so she at the time cared, but that’s it.

No one since ever has.

This is a lawngish way of saying, but mayhap not an unenjoyable way of hearing, that sometimes I’ve been known to do a thing different. This is not me tryin’a sound so cool (a detestable thing; read late, semi-sainted journalist and Roman Catholic Michael Kelly’s essay, ‘King of Cool’ — you can find it by Googling his name with ‘Do not blame it on the bossa nova’ or just click here).

A place presently fitful for this anti-socialization behavior is graduate school — or as Rachelle might mock, grade-jyoo-eight skool.

My APA papers are APA papers but do not sound like APA papers.

This causes a response very exactly like, ‘This is not an APA paper.’

Imagine a shopping list that rhymes.

A room piled with papers, plied with books, not the 60-inch TV expected.

A black bear with a mountainous interstate highway-shaped streak of charcoal gray down his spine.

Are they still a list, a room, a bear?

Not what we thought such things hadda be.

If we care a’tall on’t we may end up caring more.

If we don’t, that’s not a person I’m writing to for with.

Not even with for to grade-jyoo-eight.

None too cool it ain’t.

Which is OK.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

True Romance

Mentioned last week the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term used in film to refer to a female — not a woman, mark you, but a girl or perhaps female, depending on the level of [im]maturity — who exists in a story not for herself, more deeply not as a Self, but only for the

Read More »

On Real

Learned of late that several people — at least three husbands in young marriages, two with young children, everyone in his 20s — had not only never read The Velveteen Rabbit … but hadn’t heard of it. That sorta explains why it’s public domain and I can link to it here. Also explains why when

Read More »

Subjective, Objective

The other day I wrote on a wing and a whim … and misremembering. Or as Prufrock put it, quoting Woman — That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. Nearly nothing I recalled happened in that way. Except of course the recalling. And a bit more. Wasn’t a

Read More »

People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that

Read More »

Random

Columbo: Why We Watch

This is part one of a two-part post on why, some 45 years later, we still watch Columbo. Part two is here. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, found here. Thank you. * For my wedding, I asked for and received the Columbo DVD collection. Complete to that point, it ended

Read More »

One Question, Two Answers

How to be really great Your life will be immeasurably great — incalculably awesome — if you put others in place of … you.  We will be great if we put others before us.  That is, if we put them first. One week at church, a pastor culled some points from a book on Christian

Read More »

Centurion Prayer Day One

Going to start a little experiment. Well, it’s not terribly small, given that it will take nearly a third of a year that’s already one-fourth done. I’m calling the idea Centurion Prayer. I already like the name, so don’t try to change my mind. The idea is 100 days of prayer, and it’s not a

Read More »

Of Love

We like lists. Here’s one. Love is a song Love is the greatest song Love is integral Love is alive Love is gospel Love is power Love is work Love is desire and fulfillment Love is suffering Love is free Love is true to reality Love is accurate Love is simple Love is individual Love

Read More »

Related

Finding Level

Relationship finds its own level. Generally it looks like we [and others] choose — a boy’s entreatment rejected, an attorney makes partner, 158 million of us vote — but there is a finality to much that we ostensibly do. This is how such absurdities as determinism gain purchase, how authors can talk and be misunderstood

Read More »

Words on Silence

Silence is the real. Words lie on top. + To be alone with the Alone He drapes himself in silence Art, too, is the fruit of silence Silence is the privilege of the brave Silent love can only grow in humility What is extraordinary is always silent Silence strips man and makes him like a

Read More »

No Words

Silence is faith. Before God Before others When I was quiet with G___ and B___ and J___ — that was faith. When I am silent it is that. Silence before M___ or D___ on C___. Contentment in solitude Acceptance of opposition Okayness in life going ‘other’ No wife or woman Prayer. These are faith. + Faith not:

Read More »

Trusting Taylor Sheridan

Yellowstone sucks. Och! — but you knew that. Wait … umm … we can agree on that right? + Prolly not — else why this blog post and the recent headline that its ‘creator’, Taylor Sheridan, said Season 4 is in the can. + I tried to get through Season 1 again. Had bought it a

Read More »