FINALS FROM HELL

This is one of those bait and switch approaches that you're not supposed to use in writing. Or are you? I can't remember which elementary school teacher taught me what. My brain is popcorn.

I'm done with finals. Worst quarter ever. I produced 55 pages of text in about 5 days for my soul-consuming slave masters. My semi-hallucinatory, sleep deprived scholarship also produced a number of ancillary existential gems that I could quite fit into the papers. So, for your enjoyment...

Thought 1:

Somehow, at one point during one of the nights when I should have been sleeping next to Jessie, but instead was enjoying my couch and the comfort of a bluish LCD, I was given (for a snap moment) a glimpse of how my mind used to work as a kid. I'm not really sure how this happened, but it was cool. I'm not talking about the recollection of an childhood experience from an adult perspective. This was remembering exactly how I thought about things as an 8 year old (age approximate).

Anyways, my dad used to be salesman of sort. I never really understood what he did, and (duh) couldn't therefore explain it to anyone either. We later came up with the hypothesis that he somehow worked for the CIA or some similar government agency, and that the reason we couldn't understand his job description was because he was required, upon inquiry, to dole out a vague combination of adjectives and other sentences fillers that left you too confused to probe further. He fit the profile: up early, suit and tie, always carrying a briefcase, grueling travel schedule. No guns in the briefcase though (I checked), which didn't fit with our hypothesis. Only this dumb calculator that didn't even work in the right order that calculators are supposed to work.

 (time out: imagine my surprise years later when my accounting professor pulls out the same dumb calculator and tells us about all of its virtues, how it still holds the gold standard in finance after years and years, etc. In jr. high, when I got my first graphing calculator, [which of course was better than my dad's dork calculator because A) you could see what you typed, B) it was bigger, and C) punching the keys in the correct order gave you the right answer], I tried to sell my dad on it because his really sucked. I ate my words on my way to the bookstore after that day in accounting when I went to pick up my very own HP 12C. I actually wrote about this whole experience in my cover letter to Goldman Sachs - they loved it! It was the first thing they brought up in the interview. time in)

 So my dad worked for an insurance company and he was a salesman in the earlier years (or an assassin, still not sure about that one).  Anyways, here is the memory. He would go to these "meetings" (today Jameson realizes that the meetings were probably much more random and irregular than previously thought) and come home with cool trinkets, like tshirts, pens, sticky notes, little balls, and other random SWAG that people give out at conventions with their silkscreened logo. Bringing that stuff home was the best viral marketing those businesses ever had. Anyways, in my 8 year old mind, I thought that each time he left for a business trip, he was going to the same meeting. And, after one of these meetings he brought home a mini Swiss army knife. I thought it was the greatest thing ever! I was just about to get into boy scouts, and I think my dad told me that when I earned my Totem Chip (sp?), which is the knife certification thingy for Boy Scouts or maybe even cub scouts, I don't really remember, he would bring me one of those knives from his meeting. 

(time out: giving me the Totem Chip turned out to be the worst idea ever. I was a pretty awesome boy scout. I could tie basically any knot that was ever invented, and some that weren't, and I got my eagle scout by the time i was 13. But, I also managed to stab a kid, cut my hands several times, and embed an axe in my knee. Guess which one necessitated a trip to the emergency room?)

This story doesn't have a blockbuster ending. I just remembered how stoked I was at the prospect of getting a knife, and my perception of what my dad did at his "meetings"  (if he did really well at work, they'd give him a knife. what a cool job!). I think I did get the knife at some point, but it was after my intense anticipation had worn off and I'd found another way to occupy my faculties. I wish I could remember what it was like to be a kid more often. I'm going to really need that as a parent. I'm already too darn out of touch with that important stuff. I never wanted to be the grouchy old guy - that's why I hold on to as much "immaturity" as possible (yes, it is a conscious choice, sweetheart).

Thought 2:

I miss Scout. Jessie doesn't think she's that "cute". I think she'll have a hard time making that argument when she comes home one day to this:

Shazzaam!

Thought 3:

Stayed tuned.