I DID WHAT?

I got a call last night from a soon to be graduate student who is about to return to college to get his MBA after working in the real world for the last five years.

Apparently he had been up in his family's attic, no doubt looking for water balloons to take to campus, and he found something. It must have been important because he actually interrupted his search to call and tell me what he found.

"Hey, I found those signs you made."

"What signs?"

"The ones you made for my birthday."

"What birthday?"  Oh wait. 

Back when he was a newbie freshman in college I flew to New Jersey and drove down to his college in Baltimore with his family. We were going to watch him sit on the bench for a football game and then go out to celebrate his birthday. Before we got there he had been complaining about not knowing anyone in his dorm, so I made a huge batch of 8.5 x 11 posters that said October 28th was his birthday. Nothing like a telling people there's a birthday in the dorm to help break the ice.  I still wish I'd brought some of those silly pointy birthday hats to hand out.  Maybe a few noisemakers too.

When we got down to Baltimore, I put up the posters all over his dorm. I mean everywhere. Taped to the sidewalks out front. Hanging in the women's bathroom. In the elevators. I think I also did things like announce it was his birthday to anybody, especially cute girls [all two of them] that we passed on campus. Luckily he's a goodlooking kid and girls were smiling back in sympathy because he had such lame relatives. And I'm only an honorary aunt.

Yeah, it was very embarrassing. For him. And I had completely forgotten about my role in making his life a living hell. What a pleasant trip down memory lane.

So it was nice to remember those halcyon days of yesteryear as he is about to give up the thrills of working for a big multinational company to go back to school and hit the books again.

He's going to a bigger, more traditional college campus this time. One that has a nationally ranked football team and a reputation for gorgeous co-eds. If you're going to college you might as well have a good experience.His undergraduate life was so bleak at the other school that he decided to get out of there in three years. There was nothing to do but study so he ended up graduating Phi Beta Kappa in economics. Trust me, that had to be an accident -- a triumph of native intelligence over knowledge. One of these days he's going to read something that isn't listed on a syllabus. Like say, a newspaper. I am always amazed at how little he knows about current events. In fact, I'll email him now and ask him what he thinks of the Tour de France mess and the latest Lindsay Lohan thing.

I'll be back.

I'm back -- here's the email I got from MBA Boy --

 so- read the following sequence of events....
 
 1) i read this email and thought to myself...what a random email [Mrs. Linklater] sent me...i mean, who cares about those events....so i thought for a minute about your questions. First in literal terms and couldn't come up with any answer for the tour de france question. And then for the lindsay lohan question, i do remember hearing her name across the news for some reason- but don't remember the details (i didn't pay attention because i don't think she is hot anyway)....
 
 so, i was going to reply to your email and say something like the following: "[Mrs. Linklater]"- why are you asking me these random questions...you're crazy (cause we just usually talk on phone about silly details like this)...so why don't you tell me what's up with these events?"
 
 2) before replying to your email...i decided to read your 'aol alert'...and now understand why you wrote me the email with the random questions...very funny!
 
Mrs. Linklater gloats: He rarely reads my journal on the day I publish something. Damn, I got busted.  But he admits he didn't know anything about the Tour or Lindsay, so I rest my case.