Bowls, Boulevards and Backstrokes

Cereal Bowls
The other day, I was accused not once, but twice, of being “weird,” and each of these accusations came from a 7th grader – which is, as the saying goes, probably an example of, “the pot calling the kettle weird.” Anyhow, the first occurrence occurred when a student accused me of wearing a “weird-looking shirt,” which technically isn’t accusing me of being weird, but since it’s weirdness by association, we’ll go ahead and split the difference and go with it for now. What I was wearing was a Hawaiian shirt that I’d gotten in Hawaii, and which I consider to be quite stylish. I asked him why he thought my shirt was “weird” when I viewed it to be quite stylish, and he said he liked it, but it just wasn’t my normal style (which, to be fair, it probably isn’t since it has buttons and a collar and my usual shirt has neither of those). The second incident occurred when a student asked me if I had a special bowl that I used for cereal, which may seem like kind of a random question for someone to ask (and I guess it might be, but these kinds of things happen on a regular basis when one is dealing with 7th graders). Apparently, there’s a reference to having a special bowl for one’s cereal in a song called “Friday” which I was supposed to have heard of because it’s fairly popular and is sung by some fairly popular teeny-bopper. I hadn’t heard the song before, so I went and listened to it later, and I have to say I wasn’t impressed (especially by the really lame video accompanying the song) but then I listened to the original version by Bob Dylan, which was actually pretty good, and I was kind of depressed by how horribly the teeny-bopper had mangled Bob Dylan’s pretty decent song. Anyway, I told this 7th grader that I did, in fact, have a special bowl for my cereal, and she thought that was pretty weird, which led to her accusing me of being weird, because, as she put it, “Can’t you just pull out any old bowl and use it?” but I explained that I like big bowls, so I’d bought a big plastic bowl that I use for cereal and salad and grapes and other food items that go into big bowls, and what’s more I have certain cups for my coffee because I like the size and feel of them and she decided that was even weirder, to which I guess I had to sort of agree about my weirdness, because I guess I am a little weird about the whole bowl/cup thing, but what are you going to do?

Oracle Revisited
I experienced/observed yet another strange occurrence on Oracle this morning (previous strange sightings have included nuns in a Ford Taurus, a ninja runner, and a monkey in a car). Today, as I was driving down Oracle on my way to work after a lovely swimming workout (marred only slightly by the presence of a gaggle of giggling boot-campers) I was in the far left lane cruising along between Ina and Orange Grove when I spotted a car ahead of me that was stopped. Right in the middle of the road – just stopped. No hazard lights on – just stopped in the lane I was driving in. So I slowed down, wondering what was going on, and switched lanes so I wouldn’t plow into this car that’s stopped in the middle of the road, and as I approached, I tried to figure out why he had stopped in the middle of Oracle (which is a pretty busy road – even at 6:35 in the morning) and near as I can tell, he had stopped because there was something (about as big as a breadbox) sitting right next to the median and he was checking to see if it was worth picking up. I deduce this from the fact that he was stopped in the middle of the road, that he opened his door and leaned out of the car to take a closer look at whatever the object was (I wasn’t able to make out what the object actually was) and that he apparently decided it wasn’t worth picking up, because he closed his door without picking the item up and continued on his way (this happened after I’d passed him by). I will admit that I’ve stopped while riding my bike a few times to pick something up (usually a pair of sunglasses) but I don’t think I’d ever stop my car in the middle of a busy road to do so. And neither should you (consider this your driving tip of the day).

Speaking of swimming…
As I was finishing up my swim today, I decided to try a couple of laps of backstroke as a cool-down. This was suggested to me by my swimming coach, Josh, who claims that it’s a good way to stretch out the muscles and has been trying to get me to backstroke through my cool-down at our practices. Actually, I think he’s only encouraging me to backstroke through my cool-down because he thinks it’s funny to watch me thrash about aimlessly and run into the ropes on the sides of the lane. The problem is, I’m not a swimmer by nature (or nurture, for that matter) so I haven’t done much backstroking in my course of my life, so I have a tendency to run into the ropes on the sides of the lane while attempting to navigate down the pool. But as the old saying goes, “Practice makes perfect” (or maybe it’s, “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”) so I figured I’d give it a shot since I had a lane to myself and nobody was really paying attention to me (there are lifeguards, but I don’t think they’re paying all that much attention to us at these early morning swims – especially with all the gyrating and giggling and what-not that the boot-campers are doing). Anyway, the point of all this is that I actually made it all the way from one end of the pool to the other without once whamming into the floats on either side of the lane (I will admit I cheated by peeking over every once in awhile to reorient myself). So there you go.

That’s all I can think of for now, so until next time, may your passages through whatever town you pass through be worry free, may your cereal bowls be large enough to accomodate whatever cereal you choose to eat, and may your backstroke remain smooth and unfettered by herky-jerky motions that misdirect you off the desired course and into hazardous waters.