8 March 1999: Dick and Jane

HAO and I were talking about Richie Rich the other day. This obscure (for me) topic we broached after she confessed a childhood (I should hope not a contemporary) crush on Ricky Schroder, who starred in a television show called "Silver Spoons." That conversation reminded RDC that people sometimes used to call him Richie Rich, thinking that just because they were making a television reference they were a) the first to think of it and b) funny. "At least," he continued (I'm paraphrasing liberally), "with that SNL copy room skit the character had some relation to me." (He worked in the library copy center when I first knew him.) Didn't Homer Simpson recently suffer the same prestige? Nevertheless I had no sympathy. I cut my eyes at him, raised my eyebrows, and gave him one of my Looks. "What?" he wondered.

"You're talking to Hot Lips. You get no sympathy from me." My first name isn't Margaret, but few people respected that distinction.

Saturday morning, after ten days off, I succumbed enough to Windows at home to read some email. Then we bought desks and set up the Mac and <sigh of relief> life is back to normal.

You know, I crack myself up. Of course, I am a small audience, thus not the most desirable, but at least I'm a guaranteed response. Today we had a mailing fête, which means all hands to the wheel. Gathered around a conference table, we sorted and stuffed and sealed and talked.

One conversational subject was the recent postage hike, so the post office was alternately criticized and praised, until someone actually said "And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder." Well, no, that would have left me in an hysterical heap on the floor, but someone really did say, "It is certainly very well regulated." It makes me sad that anyone could quote Emma (Volume II, chapter 16 ) so perfectly and in context but unrehearsed and unknowing, and forever after live content unaware of the fact, but I knew my audience too well to try to explain my suppressed chortle. This is probably why I come off as rude so often--it is rude of me to laugh out loud (my only way) at my own internal jokes, especially when my audible laughter could be construed as ridicule of someone else.

Anyway, my Austen-addiction amused me out of whatever pretense at professional reserve I feign to attempt. A few minutes later, Denver's hosting some of the NCAA basketball finals came up. "And UConn is going to be here," a coworker mentioned, glancing at me.

"Yes, I know. RDC is pleased; he can probably get a friend in Storrs to get tickets, so I might see my first basketball game." I felt two stares. Austen sloshed over my ego cup, and I continued, "Although I don't know why living two thousand miles away should excuse me from my long-held prejudice against collegiate athletics and induce me to attend such an exhibition."

Whatever. I shouldn't've said anything. I know, okay? At least no one queried my use of "exhibition" in this context. I dislike college athletics as much as I do professional athletics, and furthermore I don't see much distinction between college and professional. Students who deserve academic scholarships don't get them because funds go for athletic scholarships. Lots of "students" who attend college on an athletic scholarship don't get a good education because they haven't had foundation in K-12 (since they devoted so much time to their sport) to get anything out of secondary education and because the athletics demand too much time. Student athletes---notice which is the modifier and which the noun and thus the more important---and their substructure foster grade inflation. Athletic departments suck funds from the school; the supposed justification that a successful team not only pays for itself but generate more revenue for the general fund is blatantly false. Alumni and alumnae* who give to their schools when the teams do well but not when an academic department has succeeded prove that their educations have failed them. Too many people pin their hopes on athletics when the percentage of those who get athletic scholarships to college and can make a living in the professional arena afterward is extremely low, and while they're pinning their hopes to their hoops, they ignore their academics, which stand them a much greater chance of later success. What else. Well, anyway, the foundation of my opposition is intellectual elitism, and that's how I tried to dismiss my comment: "I'm being elitist, I know, but I dislike how people favor athletic over academic prowess."

Someone suggested the school spirit factor, but I asked why such spirit couldn't come from something academic. So someone laughed, "I can see it now, the NCAA Debating March Madness."

So again Janey appeared in my head:

I should like balls infinitely better," [Caroline Bingley] replied, "if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day."

"Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball."

(Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, chapter 11) (I link to the Penguin because that's what I have, but this edition has architecture on the cover instead of the detail of the portrait of Lady Colville by Henry Raeburn on my edition. This might be quite right of Penguin, though; in its very introduction is an excerpt from a letter from Jane to her sister Cassandra: "We have been both to the Exhibition and Sir J. Reynolds', --and I am disappointed, for there was nothing like Mrs D. at either. [She was looking at portraits.] I can only imagine that Mr D. prizes any Picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye."

At this point, any attempt by me to explain away my grin would have been insufferably pretentious, even if it would have proven the intellectual elitism I had claimed. Especially since Caroline Bingley herself was only affecting her own snobbery trying to impress Mr. Darcy. I write about it here instead, where my audience is self-selected (Hi HAO!)

*Getting pissier and pissier and thus more formal in vocabulary (so that "alums" can pass neither lips nor fingertips) if also more convoluted in syntax. (hup!)

Oh, and my literary allusions are not limited to Jane Austen and children's books. When we moved, we noted which side of the mattress was up because we wanted to flip it. It looked like we were sleeping with Miss Emily.