Starbucks.

My aunt and uncle were out of town when I arrived at their house last weekend, so I had to entertain myself. It had been quite some time since I’d been into that area so I didn’t know what all was around. I decided to find someplace to sit down, vedge, and maybe read a newspaper. I had eaten at the airport, so Starbucks seemed like as good a place as any. I figured that if I followed the Interstate for a few miles that I would have to see one.

Sure enough, there it was. So added to my list of things that I love about this country is the ability to close your eyes, throw a dart at a map, and most likely find a Starbucks within a few miles of wherever the dart lands.

I think that chains in general have an undeservedly bad reputation. I will write more on this later, but it sure is helpful to be able to find a place where you know roughly how good their product is and how much it’s going to cost.

By way of Phi I ran across a discussion on the pro’s and con’s of homeschooling.

If/when Clancy and I have kids, homeschooling is an option that will be on the table. It will depend in large part what kind of public education system there is wherever it is we end up.

Dizzy, who was homeschooled from the fifth grade through high school, looks at the movement on negative terms:

Honestly, I think the homeschooling movement is a joke. It’s more common now to band homeschooling kids together to learn those subjects – everyone pitches in to hire a tutor or something. So that’s an improvement. And homeschoolers are now allowed to join sports teams in their school district. So that’s better too.

But unless your parents are BRILLIANT, well-educated, and stationed as missionaries in Burma or something, it’s not generaly your best option.

I know two people off the top of my head that were homeschooled and with whom I talked about homeschooling. I asked one of them about his experiences and they were quite positive. He had seven siblings, though, and said that some of his siblings did not fare nearly so well. About half probably did better than they would have in a public school environment and about half did worse. A couple did miserably and were probably irreversibly harmed by it in ways that he did not specify*.

There are a lot of factors to be considered before making the choice on whether or not to homeschool. One of the ones I’ve long considered in the negative category is the lack of socialization. Both Clancy and I have a rather restricted comfort zone and neither of us are particularly extroverted. These social setbacks could be greatly compounded by lack of exposure to other people. If they are disinclined to go out and meet people and they’re not forced to in a school environment, that could be very problematic.

I’ve begun to reconsider this stance, though, and wonder if maybe the social environment of public school is a hindrance. Not only when compared to private schools or better run public schools, but also when compared to lack of exposure overall. I have begun to wonder if I might actually be better socialized had I not gone to school at all.

We all have a tendency to justify or rationalize our negative experiences as learning ones. Often this is justified because we learn from our mistakes. But sometimes we learn the wrong lessons and learning the wrong lesson is usually worse than not having learned any lesson at all because not only do you still need to learn the right lesson, you also need to unlearn the wrong one. Arguably, ignorance is better than misinformation if for no other reason than you’re less likely to act on it.

I was a pretty gregarious kid. I was such a smiley baby that when I was really ill it would have gone unnoticed had it not been accompanied by excessive barfing and weight-loss. To the best of my recollection and from what my parents have told me, this remained true through church-run preschool until late elementary school. As with most people, my junior high years were absolutely miserable. I’d become so jaded that I completely missed out on the social opportunities that I had in high school and beyond.

I don’t want to paint a picture of myself as a depressive socially inept loser because that really wouldn’t be accurate. I am, however, so cautious that being around people is a draining experience. This despite the fact that I can’t even remember the last time I was actually an outcast and if I don’t get along great with people it has more to do with different interests than it does my not knowing how to act. For the most part, I have figured out how to act, how to make friends, and how to avoid annoying people or make enemies. People that get to know me generally like me, though I don’t make that too easy on most people.

But here’s something I’ve only recently figured out: The lessons I’ve learned about how to deal with people were almost entirely learned outside of K-12 and frequently involved unlearning what I learned while I was there. I learned more about how to interact with people from behind a keyboard and monitor than I did in the hallways of my various schools***. I learned how to work with other people only after college**. It took me well into college before I stopped being paranoid that anyone outside my social clique didn’t actively dislike me.

Factor in little league sports and church youth group, I honestly think that I might have been a whole lot better off educated in relative seclusion and given a copy of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and How To Win Friends and Influence People than I was being placed in the high school social environment. The best thing I can say about high school was not the social aspect of it or even the learning****, but rather learning how to operate within a structured environment not to my liking. Two years would have been more than sufficient for that.

My main concern with this, however, is that I shouldn’t universalize from my own experience. K-12 isn’t as ego-deflating an experience for everyone as it was for me. Indeed, had I never put on a lot of weight it may never have been that bad for me (though I don’t think it would have helped all that much). As my friend’s siblings’ experiences point out, it’s not for everyone developmentally. I also have another object lesson that may or may not be relevent to homeschooling and social problems: Walt was homeschooled.

* – Knowing what I do of at least one of his siblings, this problem was likely related to social development. She did not do well in any interaction that isn’t 1-on-1 or generally intimate. She got to college and was lost.

** – I could have learned a lot more than I did in high school as I started losing weight and make more friendly acquaintances, but by that point I was so jaded that I was oblivious to the opportunities that I had. I can’t believe that I didn’t realize that certain girls may have liked me and a lot of guys would have wanted to be my friend.

*** – In K-12+BS I was constantly stuck in the default group of people that couldn’t find other people to be with. They were generally not people that I would trust with my grades so I did most projects on my own for the entire group.

**** – I’m the kind of person who more-or-less ignored what the teacher was talking about and learned by teaching myself or getting help from Dad.

Some of you older readers will remember a cease-and-desist letter I got from some company called Dixona Trucking. We more-or-less agreed that I should ignore it because the lawsuit threat was beyond ludicrous. Anyhow, I thought that was the end of it but I was contacted by my domain host a couple days back. Apparently he filed a complaint through their complaint system (he can’t go after me directly because my domain is anonymous). They said that they were looking into it.

Long story short, the whole situation is absolutely ridiculous. But you know what? Dumber things have happened than my identity getting disclosed in this mess. I decided that I would save everyone some time and go through and change all references of Dixona to my new home state name, Delosa. Dixona was obviously a play on “Dixie”. Delosa is apropos nothing except my appreciation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

While I was going through it, I changed the suburb I was raised in from Tangramayne to Mayne to avoid getting traffic for people looking for Bard’s Tale cheats.

While I was visiting my aunt, my cousin-in-law Dehlia stopped by. Dehlia is married to Aunt Caroline’s eldest son Rodge (Roger, Jr). Dehlia is extremely pleasant and quite attractive. Rodge, on the other hand, is morbidly obese. Not only that, but he’s also not the most pleasant person to be around. He has a passive mean streak, put-down jokes that you aren’t sure are entirely jokes. For most of my life I’ve wondered how it is that he won her over. But during my younger days it did give me hope that I, too, might find someone like Dehlia.

It’s not uncommon in television to see a hot wife with a lukewarm (or worse) husband. The most commonly mentioned examples are According to Jim and King of Queens. Not only is there an attractiveness disparity, but one of maturity as well. I’m a believer that we are more influenced by popular entertainment than we believe. Though no one would come out and say it (or even recognize it), I think that a lot of guys look at those partnerships and internalize an optimistic view of what they might get if they try hard enough or get lucky. Even if they are outwardly pessimistic.

When I was a kid, I was fat, had acne, poor posture, unkempt hair, an introverted and awkward persona, and an uncool wardrobe. I wasn’t particularly optimistic most of the time, but looking back shows like Just The Ten Of Us (which paired a heavy Bill Kirchenbauer with a trim Deborah Harmon) and considering my cousin I was still left room to dream. Now hope is generally a good thing, but it can sometimes get in the way of a necessary self-evaluation. Or it can allow us to overlook the old maxim that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. Lady Luck almost always shines her grace on the prepared.

It’s worth noting that even within the context of these television shows, there is something that the hefty male characters have that most of their real-life counterparts lack: charisma. They’re generally outgoing and personable, if dim and immature.

It’s also worth noting that most of us can tell the difference between entertainment and reality. The problem is that we sometimes see (or think we see) televised perceptions in real life as well. No one past a certain age thinks that people can fly a la Superman because they’ve never seen it and it’s been explained to them that people can’t fly. However, little fat kids are not told by people whose opinions they honor that they’re going to end up old and alone or doomed to end up with a fellow fattie. And further they see numerous counterexamples, which brings me back to my cousin.

A guy can see them on the street and think to themselves (“Hey, if he can get a woman that looks like that, so can I!”). I used to the same when I was single and in search of a pick-me-up. We find hope wherever we can. What the person on the street does not see, and what growing up I did not know, was how exactly Dehlia and Rodge came to be. Once upon a time Rodge was an athlete in top physical form; it was only after they married that he let himself go. Also, Dehlia had a son in need of a father, which Rodge had to be (despite the fact that my cousin-once-removed is very brown-skinned and both his parents were right, it never occurred to me that Rodge wasn’t the father). Dehlia’s son is a great kid and I don’t mean to suggest that being his father was a steep price to pay, but it is precisely the price that a lot of moaners and groaners don’t want to pay.

Bob wrote on a variation a variation of the media-perceptions theme a little while back. He points out that our cues for what to look for in a partner are imperfect. Similarly, our cues for where we stand socially are equally skewed. This is particularly true for guys like me growing up who had absolutely no sense of reality because I’d never had a date. Once I was actually in a position where girls started liking me, I was able to gauge where exactly I was in the dating queue. Before that I was nowhere, but then a lot of people were nowhere, and one could realistically see that he or she wasn’t going to be nowhere forever. Waiting sucks when you’re fifteen.

The problem doesn’t go away, though, when one never does enter the dating scene for whatever reason. Their perspective becomes truly warped by media perceptions as David Alexander’s appears to have by pornography. Fortunately for me, I met a girl named Delsie. Through Delsie I discovered that real live girls were actually pretty cool even if they didn’t entirely measure up to my fantasies. Before long I discovered that Delsie lacked something that I needed, so I moved on and met Julie. After a long relationship I discovered that I needed something more than that, too. But even those flawed experiences were infinitely better than the perfect ones in my mind and I adjusted my expectations accordingly. Before long I learned that attractiveness comes in many shapes and sizes. The ones that I fell for the hardest were actually further from my earlier ideal than the ones that I left.

Clancy was offered a full-ride scholarship to Southern Tech when she graduated high school (a couple of years before I did). I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she’d gone to Sotech and we’d met in Colosse when she was 19 and I was 17. I’ve come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have worked out. We both would have thought we were too good for one another.

Unfortunately, some people don’t get there. They hold on to the pop culture miscues and then become bitter when it doesn’t work out for them.

I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Almeida today. Almeida, the town of 40,000 or so where I work about half an hour away from Santomas where I live, has an amazing number of Mexican restaurants. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say half the restaurants in town serve some variation of Mexican or Tex-Mex. It’s a paradise.

I ate at a restaurant that I usually don’t eat it because my car was getting repaired and it was within walking distance. Their food was great and reasonably priced, but I won’t be eating there again.

The problem is that all of their enchilada plates only came with two enchiladas. I’m a three enchilada guy at least, four if I forgo the rice and beans or if I’m really hungry. Two just whets my appetite. I asked the waiter if I could pay extra to get a third enchilada and he told me that they didn’t sell enchiladas a la carte. If I wanted that third enchilada, I had to order a second plate and spend a whopping $13 for four enchiladas for lunch.

Just to review, I want to give them money for a product that they sell. I am happy to give them considerably more than it cost them because they are, after all a business. I want to give them money for something it wouldn’t be terribly hard to do. I know that they don’t mind extras because they offer sour cream or guacamole for an additional $.69 so I know they know that they aren’t so rigid as to only offer standard plates.

But for some reason, they will not let me give them more money for more product. I do not understand this. I am not trying to avoid their high-profit-margin items like beans and rice because I am getting a platter anyway.

This kind of thing drives me nuts. Mexican restaurants are pretty competitive in Almeida. Restaurants are competitive everywhere. Whether I go to a place or not depends on whether or not I can get what I want. So nevermind the extra buck they would have made by charging me two for an enchilada, they’ve lost my business.

This is hardly a problem unique to Mexican food restaurants, though for a variety of reasons (primarily that they sell quantities of small foods like tacos or enchiladas) they seem to be the worst about it.

It reminds me a bit of my frustration dealing with the Ford dealership a little while back. I wanted to pay them for a service, but they wouldn’t perform it even though they had nothing else to be doing. They would have made money off of me and would I would have gone there today for repeat business, but my car broke down and I didn’t want to have to make an appointment to an empty garage.

I know that there are customers out there that expect to be waited on hand-and-foot. I’m not even asking for that. I know that I get what I pay for. But darn it I want to pay more and I want them to give me more. I don’t understand what is so difficult about this.

Ramen.

I swear that almost nothing makes me prouder to be an American than the proliferation of ramen on store shelves. I absolutely love the fact that I can get an entire meal for $.10. An entire meal. Ten cents.

Yes, it’s fatty and carb-rich and salty. No, it’s not exactly delicious. Yes, most any college student can tell you how tired of it you get when it’s all you eat. But despite all this, you can get an entire meal, 400 or so calories with 40% of your daily allotment of fats… for ten cents.

Unfortunately, these things often don’t last.

It seems that they are replacing the ten cent packets with these ready-to-heat cups. Instead of getting 12 for $1.20, it’s 6 for about $1.05. That’s still an entire meal for under $.20 and it does have the added convenience. But come up, the food is complete and utter crap. Why the heck would I pay twenty cents for it? Unfortunately, slowly but surely the stocks are shifting from the absurdly cheap kind to the very cheap kind.

It makes me fear for the future of this fine country of ours.

Monica Lewinsky came up in a conversation at Half Sigma and I referred to her as a “pleasant airhead“.

Lewinsky somewhat recently got a Master’s Degree from the London School of Economics, so perhaps I shouldn’t use the word “airhead” to describe her.

I don’t know much about the London School of Economics, but it was the school used in two political TV shows for opposite effect. The West Wing had Jed Bartlet as a student at the LSE before going on to win a Nobel Prize and become President of the United States. One gets the impression that he was a pretty bright guy and that the fact that he went to the London School of Economics is emblematic of that. I certainly got the impression that it was a pretty elite place.

Another fictional attendee of the LSE, however, is British Prime Minister Jim Hacker from Yes, (Prime) Minister. In that series the LSE was the butt of jokes. One imagines that if they were to have translated that series over to the US they would have use some state or directional school in its place.

The strangest thing happened tonight when I stopped by McDonald’s for a Filet’o’fish Sandwich (gotta eat healthy, you know). To wash it down I asked for a small coke.

So I got my sandwich and… a small Coke. Like, a Coke that was actually in a small cup. No kidding.

I’m used to “small” bring this relative concept wherein a large is actually huge, a medium is large, and a small is still actually about as big as a bottle. Instead, I asked for a small and I got a small.

Greenwood Hall, where Hubert and I and company stayed at Southern Tech, the rooming situation was (for the most part) two roommates per room and two rooms per bathroom (connected both by each having a door into the bathroom and by a door between the two that could be locked from either end). When I first started, Hubert had the idea of getting all four beds into one room and and then the other room could be a commons area for everybody.

The problem was that we needed to find four people. We found them in our sophomore year with a couple guys that lived across the hall: Dennis and Saresh. All we had to do was convince the two people adjoined with Dennis and Saresh to switch with us. One, Marco, was easy. We got along great with him and assured him that he could hang out in our little arrangement as much as he wanted. The problem was Ahmad, Marco’s randomly assigned roommate.

Our dislike for Ahmad was instant. We tried to get to know him and befriend him, but he made it difficult. Hubert gave him a tour of the dorms, including our own. He had a derogatory attitude towards our television, towards our room decoration, and just about everything. We wanted to like him and offer him the same deal as Marco, but he had no use for us and it didn’t take long for us to have no use for him.

Except that we did have a use for him. We needed to get him to change rooms with us.

We tried to befriend him, but that didn’t work. We even tried to intimidate him (“You need friends here,” or something to that effect), which wasn’t our nature. He wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t a matter of him not wanting to repack and unpack his stuff because he barely had any stuff and we volunteered to move it for him. The only reason he gave for the move was that our room was smaller than his, except that the two were absolutely identical. We would bring him measurements, offer to let him watch us measure, and anything else we could think of to convince him, but he would not be convinced. He didn’t want to be convinced, he was just being obstinate.

We got a lucky break when, after a couple of days, Dennis came over exasperated. “Ahmad was in my room! {breathe, breathe} on my computer. {breathe, breathe} Looking at gay porn!”

We asked him to repeat it a couple times just to make sure that we understood him correctly. We did. “Did he see you see him?” we asked.

“Yeah, but I bolted out of there before I had time to react.” Dennis was apparently visiting Marco in Marco and Ahmad’s room, so Ahmad thought he had the room to himself. Dennis discovered him walking through the adjoining door (which faced directly at Dennis’s computer) before bolting out, across the hall, and straight to us.

About five minutes late, Ahmad dropped by for a visit. He asked if we had any medicine for a sick stomach because he had just seem something that made him feel sick. He specified that he had seen something on Dennis’s computer. He was sent a link in email that he followed. He saw it for an instant and it made him sick. We might have even believed him had he not gone on so long about it. We recommended some Sprite and the next opportunity we had we checked the history on Dennis’s computer. It was more than a single site that he had visited. He had downright surfed.

The ironic thing is that between us, Hugh, Dennis, Saresh, Marco, and myself, none of us were hostile to homosexuality. Though our politics all differed, we did agree on that. We never outright threatened to out Ahmad, though we did not tell him that we wouldn’t. We already were not in the habit of making conversation with him or talking things out. We didn’t have to blackmail him, though. The next day he paid us a visit and volunteered to switch rooms. And that was the end of that.

Were he not such a disagreeable person, I might have felt some sympathy for him. It can’t be easy to be bi-curious (which he was at the very least) coming from such a conservative background. I hated the idea of taking advantage of that insecurity. But at the end of the day I just didn’t like him and my sympathy was outweighed by my dislike for him. Ahmad acclimated himself to college and dorm life well. He loosened up up a bit, started dressing a little pre-metrosexualish. It was eventually established that he was a gay-leaning bisexual and that persona ended up landing him a coterie of girl friends.

After the room-switch we never really spoke to him again.

A couple other interesting tidbits:

The only friend Ahmad had during all of this was Saresh. This was inconvenient to us because it made Ahmad that much less inclined to switch rooms (because he would be switching away from Saresh) and it meant that Ahmad could be hanging around after all. Ahmad was of Pakistani descent and judging by his accent was not far removed from his ancestral homeland (though his parents were in the US, so he wasn’t an exchange student). Saresh, the fourth person in our arrangement, was of Indian heritage. Dennis pointed out that Indians and Pakistanis hate each other the world over and yet those two had to get along. Their friendship didn’t persevere, however, as Saresh converted to Catholicism and last I knew was on his way to becoming a Catholic priest.

The two guys who were our suitemates before the move were both gay or bisexual. One was an effeminate guy named Gary and the other big guy named Ellis. After the switch, that meant that of the four people in that suite arrangement, three were bisexual or gay. But they all hated one another’s guts. We’d hear them all arguing across the hall.