Not So Far Off

Like every girl I know, my sister and I played a great deal of office and school when we were younger, particularly on days off from school or during summer vacation because we couldn't get enough of that work-a-day setting. Most of the material we used was from the previous school year's religious text, since we were Catholic schoolies and got to keep our "This is Our Faith" workbooks. We would play school and office for hours, usually until my sister, who was one of my students or employees, would plead that she hadn't learned this kind of multiplication yet and therefore could not be graded fairly/perform the necessary duties.

Sometimes we decided that the teacher/pupil setting was too restrictive and we changed venues. Inspired by the show "A Different World" which portrayed the fictitious Historically Black College "Hillmon," we constructed a dorm life setting which we thought was possibly the coolest thing that ever came to be in our basement. One thing I have divulged to other friends - much to my chagrin - is that the main component of playing College Life was the use of our Trapper Keeper. There was only one for the two of us, one purple striped extra large soft binder with a picture of a neon magenta heart on both sides which TP and I used interchangeably for our homework, for our sticker album, for inserting all of the fake papers that we were given at fake school or fake work. The Trapper Keeper symbolized for us what we thought College must be like. Living life in purple and neon magenta, cramming everything good into one big soft binder. What more did one need? We would play College for hours, usually until TP would hoard the Trapper Keeper too long, taking notes in her lecture halls and all, and then I would manipulate her to give it to me so that I could organize all of my stickers within the Trapper Keeper, because, let's be honest, that is what happened on a typical day in college.

I should also mention that I was playing school with my friend Micky well up until 8th grade, and it is possible that our prized pupils included Cabbage Patch Dolls and Magic Eat n' Poop Baby. We were very age appropriate.

But besides the totally 80s school supplies and the inclusion of mute pupils with pacifiers, I have reason to believe, nay, proof that we were not so far off. Our notions of what a workplace was like and what a setting where school and life are blended were not so far-fetched. There have been plenty of moments in my own education and work in which I felt as though I had not yet learned this fancy multiplication table, and therefore, I was irreparably useless that day, since there was no going back. I would simply have to plead I never learned that and hope that my ignorance would cloak me with innocence for a day. The set-up that we used to play office, with the IN and OUT trays - that totally exists in just about every workplace. Only the "Super Job!" stickers that TP and I would brand all of our work assignments are disappointingly not used in day to day operations. There was also no time in college where my mom called me upstairs for a grilled cheese sandwich, nor where I could decide in the middle of a workday to go take a nap on the couch.

Sometimes I still wish I had that Trapper Keeper, though. I could fill it with all of my work papers and top them off with a Super Job! sticker and no one would ever know.

Preponderances that could occupy a full post if I were more focused and less consumed by thoughts of goat cheese...

Preponderance #1 - I am enjoying pregnancy, except for when I fill three full barf bags on the airplane, and when I pass the Chevre or the sushi with salmon bits at Whole Paycheck and sigh as I hear the faint echoes of YUM emanating from the ghost of my Pre-Preg Life.

Preponderance #2 - I'm still considering what the best course of action is when you arrive at the Whole Paycheck register, and discover that you are not only sans sushi and goat cheese, but also sans wallet. My course of action today was to apologize without offering to put the groceries away, and run out of the store like a woman who is going to be sick, or who has just gotten the call from her agent that she is going to be on Hollywood Squares and there was just no time to think about food at all because Hollywood Squares!! OMG!! I'm going to sit in a Brady Bunch cube and make quips that will totally date me!! Somehow I do not think that is the right course of action.

Preponderance #3 - I was walking in the neighborhood of my girlhood this past weekend. All of the homes of my friends growing up are now occupied by wiffle ball bat-toting tots. So this is what it feels like to have your own "Wonder Years" narrative running in your head. I remember the Mitchell's and the Johnson's and the Guilford's homes. I remember what photos aligned the walls of their staircases. I remember whose house had the best junk food. I remember that neighborhood and in my mind's eye, those people, those pictures, those Ding Dongs will never change....

Preponderance #4 - Thich Nhat Nanh has a lot of sage advice for married people, considering he has been a (celibate) Buddhist monk refugee person who probably did not have much time to undergo marriage counseling just for the heck of it.

Preponderance #5 - Why do they not make maternity clothes in petite sizes. Has there never been a woman who got all up in a family way whose legs and arms did not grow like an aspect ratio with her stomach?

Preponderance #6 - Is it possible that I'll be able to visit Iran someday, even with a US Passport?

Preponderance #7 - How can I expect myself to contribute more positively to the universe if I cannot even remember to use a coupon?

Trivial Knowledge

Every Friday, Workplace conducts a trivia contest. A MENSA-type question is circulated on our e-mail group and the first to e-mail back the Office Manager with the correct answer gets to keep the "Really Smart Person Award" bobble head trophy at her desk. The bobble-head has resided at my cubicle on 2 occasions. Bobble-bobble. I only win the word-oriented contests. Never the story problems or geographic questions, even though I'm pretty sure my social studies notebooks from 4th grade are peppered with "Great Job!" stickers at my neatly cursived definitions of plateau and peninsula and gerrymandering or whatever it is you learn in 4th grade social studies. I used to know all that stuff. I probably still know it all, but, as my Latin teacher once told me, "You have all of these conjugations in your brain, Kendra. You just have them stored in certain rooms and you're just not knocking at the right doors." He was kind of a self-obsessed proffy type, but he was right-on in a lot of ways, I realize now. I earned a 97 in Latin that semester, and I'm only telling you that because I remember one Latin expression in full, to this day. "Ecce, Puella." Look, girl. It is very useful, and I employ it in a multitude of professional and familiar situations, as you can imagine.

Look, girl.

I believe that I possess a lot of trivial knowledge, like the section my family parked in when we went to Disney World in 1987 (Minnie 54), the number of ounces in a small cone at Dairy Queen (6 oz.), and the names of substitute teachers I had all through grade school (Mrs. Hook, Mrs. Vavrock, Mr. Gotro). None of this information serves me any use. It will not win me the Really Smart Person Award. It will not help anyone in any way, other than to make him or her laugh at the preposterousness of someone remembering such trivial information.

Most of the conversations or bits of information that I can recall will cause me due embarrassment. Sometimes the things that I remember become a burden to me. The remark you made about the Amish in 1992? The kind of shorts you rocked in 1985? It's all fair game in my mind. I sometimes wish I didn't hoard so much trivial knowledge of fact and fiction in my head. I could use the extra space to store information about where I left my glasses, what my blood type is, what age my sister is presently. But we generally do not get to choose what and how our brains store information.

We can only choose to give ourselves a good Ecce, Puella. A good Look, Girl. Get over yourself. Forgive and forget. And even if you can't forget entirely, perhaps you can just lodge that painful conversation you recorded right next to Clever Uses for Scrunchies, which you won't even have to access, not even on Friday when the MENSA question rolls around.