The Conversationalist

"do not pee on the trampoline!"
"do not eat your books!"
"do not drink from the Windex bottle!"
"step away from the window!"
"pick up everything in the driveway you chucked out the window!"
"i don't care if you're not clean; get out of the bath!"
"pick it up put it on do it now eat it drink it wash it find it"

When I feel somewhat antisocial, and avoid my phone or my cell phone or anything other than email and carrier pigeon, it's because I am quite sure that I have lost the ability to speak in more than short phrases. Short phrases that sound like bark-y commands. I worry that my inarticulateness has reached alarming heights and that I might sound something like this: "i am hearing you speak" or "you are fine are you not?" or "i do like to dine with grownups!" or "drink cold beer with me!" or "your problem sounds problematic! tell me more!"

In typical Sunday morning fashion, today I read the New York Times and by "read" I mean to say that I perused the Styles section, the Book Review, Arts and Leisure and the Week in Review. I do actually read the OpEds (mostly to find out what will piss off my husband later), but the rest, I just kind of glance through. The Styles section makes me feel unchic. The Book Review reminds me that I spend much of my time thinking about so many insignificant things. The Arts and Leisure pages make me wonder if reality teevee is either arty or leisurely. And the Week in Review? Good God, if that doesn't just seal the deal on my lurking sense of mental malaise: I understand well only three quarters of it, if I'm lucky.

The whole process is a languorous exercise in hopeful futility. A kind "if she reads it, it will come", the "it" being some awesome sense of self-knowledge that I am smart and thoughtful after all and have not completely wasted every dime and nickel spent on my elite New England university education. Naturally, a thirty minute sit-down with a newspaper does not do it.

Lest you think I am wallowing far too long in my puddle of pity, I know I have not (wasted my education entirely): monkeys in fact cannot raise children, at least half-clean children who can speak English, and I, my friends, am no monkey. I am a college educated with honors monkey living the suburban American dream, yo, who once owned her own business but chose to sell it (for like a dollar fifty or something) when the baby raising conflicted with the late night drinking with rock stars. Or kinda rock stars or coulda woulda shoulda been rock stars. Needless to say, I made the choice and I don't regret it much, except for the lack of articulateness that seems to be part of the package.

Come to think of it, most of that overly-hyped education pretty much only taught me pseudo-interesting facts about culture and music and history and a little anthropology. I took a course called "Reading the Romantic Novel" and another on "Socialist Thought in 1930s Film and Literature" (I will never look at Frank Capra the same way again) (or Danielle Steele for that matter). I wrote my thesis on contemporary music and youth cultures, which made me something of genius in my mind: hip hop, riot grrls, and Nirvana made up the chapters and I think the concluding paragraph (100 pages later) included some line like "being asked to wear a different concert t-shirt is akin to being asked to change political parties or sexual identity". Helloooooo? Brilliant.

I think my father was right when he said that a college education is just something that makes you more interesting at cocktail parties. (That, and an ability to drink large quantities without passing out.) So maybe reading the New York Times every Sunday, or the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe, or the LA Times, or the Atlanta Journal Constitution, or the Chicago Tribune, or the Wall Street Journal or whatever the hell else it is that smart and thoughtful people read only serves the same function: to make a person sound interesting and knowledgeable instead of actually being interesting and knowledgeable.

I suppose this is serious wishful thinking on my part as I know that deep thinkers do read (and comprehend what they read) as a regular practice. I, however, rely on my Sunday peruse. And who knows? Maybe the peruse will be enough to make me speak out loud tomorrow in more eloquent ways.

I might say something like "i read the paper!" or "gas is expensive!" or "do not think I am this stupid all the time!" which I guess in some ways is better than "please leave a message after the beep" and is definitely a step up from "do not pee on the trampoline."