Syllabus #247

Are the kids ok?

Monday was April Fool's Day.  My butthole clenched when I realized the ominous date fell on a weekday.  I was sure I'd be having kids tell me it's snowing and try to sneak whoopee cushions onto my chair all. day. long.  AFD is right up there with Halloween, Easter, and Valentine's Day as days you do not want to be caught dead in a school zone.  It's the only non-candy-centric holiday to crack the top of the list.

You know what happened?  

Absolutely nothing.

No snakes in a can.  No handshake buzzers.  No whoopee cushions.  No shocking tall tales or attempts to trick and humiliate.  No prank phone calls.  No saran wrap over the toilet seat.  No vaseline on the door handle.  No bucket of water balanced precariously on the top of a door left slightly ajar.  No Ex-lax in the teacher's coffee.  

The youth have lost their edge.

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Was there a teenage girl alive in 1999 who didn't want to be exactly like Kat Stratford from 10 Things I Hate About You?  Abrasive icon.

I can't think of any earthly reason why I would go to Kansas City, MO, except to go to this immersive children's book museum.  However, I lowkey might be too scared to enter the Goodnight Moon exhibit.  And god forbid if there was a Polar Express exhibit.  I've still never made it all the way through that book.  Stephen King might be demented, but Chris Van Allsburg is a freak.

Larry David is having a moment.  It's only a matter of time before we're walking around with WWLDD? bracelets.  

Analog Reading:

Finished Ann Patchett's State of Wonder.  It started out a little slow for me, but once I was hooked, I was ensnared with the compressive force of an anaconda.  This was quite different from any of her other books I've read.  It gives echoes of Heart of Darkness and is a lot more tense and adventurous than her usual fare.  The overall gist is that a woman who works at a pharmaceutical company is dispatched to the Brazilian jungle to track down an elusive researcher who is supposedly developing a fertility drug on her company's dime.  The book was published in 2011, and it reads so differently today than it may have before Roe v. Wade was struck down.  The story hinted at a lot of interesting implications about women's reproductive choices, and the ending left a possibly horrifying outcome unexplored.  I can't help but wonder (or wish) if there was more to the story that Patchett wanted to explore, and chose not to for narrative expediency or other editorial reasons.  

Now reading Stephen King's Holly.  When I opened this book on my Kindle, I thought to myself, ahh, surely there are a good 600+ pages here for me to say goodbye to one of my favorite characters in recent memory.  Imagine my dismay and despair when I saw that this book clocks in at a mere 463 pages.  What gives??