Jumping In With Both 30.48 Centimeters

            I originally wrote this in early June, long before Donald Trump raised his hair into the presidential fray, and then promptly forgot about it. If only I could forget about Trump’s hair.

            You’d think America would support a Presidential candidate who chose to be honest and bold, as opposed to most candidates in living memory. Now the Democrats have a candidate who took a bold statement, who’s absolutely right about his bold statement, and who doesn’t stand a chance because of his bold statement.

Lincoln Chaffee—love that name—took aim at Hillary Clinton’s knees, which is about as high as he’s going to get to beating her. Maybe ankles. In his announcement he said America should become internationalist, which is another of those ideas that’s excellent in the perfect idealist world.

And as part of becoming internationalist, Chaffee thinks it’s high time America went metric.

He’s right, and I’m not just saying that because I’d vote for him over Clinton. I’d vote for almost anyone over Clinton.

As Chaffee pointed out, the United States is one of only three nations that don’t use the metric system. The other two are Myanmar and Liberia, and they’re not exactly movers and shakers, are they? There’s some question about whether Liberia’s even still there.

The metric system is simple and logical, easy to follow increments of tens and hundreds. They even stuck in the simplest possible way to measure temperature, with water freezing at zero and boiling at 100. Easy-peasy. Simple to use, better for business and science, and right in line with the rest of the world.

No wonder Americans hate it.

We’re a contrary people, and we don’t automatically go along, whether it makes sense or not. If the rest of the world jumped off the Empire State Building, we’d laugh and point. Also, in our divisive political system, it’s impossible for someone on one side to make a suggestion—no matter how reasonable—without the other side demonizing the idea. Here’s an example of what happens instead of a reasonable discussion:

“Maybe, since we’re at war with terrorist groups and being infiltrated by drug dealers, we should make more of an effort to secure our borders?”

“Racist!”

There’s also a not-unreasonable fear that some of the other ideas embraced by the rest of the world don’t work so well here. Maybe going metric would help more than it would hurt, but what would we be pushed to change next? After all:

 
Give ‘em 2.54 centimeters and they’ll take 1.6093 kilometers.

Graduating From The Doghouse

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            My wife has a lot of good qualities. Of  course, if she had bad qualities I wouldn’t write about them here, would I? That’s called “preserving the evidence”. I didn’t read all those mysteries for nothin’, bub.

            I, on the other hand … well, my qualities are only so-so.

            Which leaves me here, in the doghouse, which I guarantee the dog doesn’t appreciate at all. You see, in May Emily became a college graduate, one of the first ever in either of our families, and I didn’t throw her a party.

            Oh, I meant to. But I also meant to write a bestseller and have a beach house in Maui, and that hasn’t happened so far, either.

            What threw me is that, after a great deal of thought, she elected not to go to the actual graduation ceremony. When I was younger I thought that kind of thing was a requirement, but turns out they’ll still give you your diploma even if you don’t slap on the cap and gown. That being the case, I assume my sneaking into Purdue’s graduation with a stolen cap and gown thirty years ago would have gotten me nowhere.

            I returned the gown, by the way. Kept the cap.

            For some reason I’ve never been certain of, you’re graded in college on a 0-4 scale. You’d think colleges would be able to come up with something that had more numbers! For instance, my solid C average in high school would have translated to a solid … I don’t know … 2.5? Math was never my thing, which explains the solid C.

            But Emily is a genius, darn her, and is of that rare group that actually graduated with a 5.0 grade scale average. Don’t look at me like that, it’s true: She’s smarter than perfect. Well, she would have, if they had such a thing. She got on the Dean’s list pretty much every time except for during the whole operation/critical illness thing, which I think qualifies as a fair excuse. I got on my teacher’s list once, but boy, was that a different list.

            I know what you’re thinking: “Okay, she’s way smarter and you forgot her graduation. What does she see in you, anyway?”

            Um … well, I’m cuddly. And I know what you’re thinking, so there’s that. Otherwise, I’m trying hard not to dwell on the fact that when we met I had high speed internet, and she didn’t.

            Anyway, we both have issues with large crowds, and an IPFW graduation ceremony is nothing if not large crowds; in addition, she has issues with spending money, even on something like a cap and gown. For this I am extremely grateful. I could have married someone whose issue is with not spending money.

            The result was no ceremony, which led to me forgetting to throw her a party, and thus to the doghouse … which is cozy, but doesn’t have the best atmosphere.

            A party is certainly in order. I stink at planning parties, although I’m better at it than, say, assembling a small engine, so I’m going to farm that out. What do you think? Put my mom to work and have a mom-type party? Or talk to her friends and throw a friend type party? I’ve screwed this up badly enough that I’m thinking both.

            Meanwhile, I ask this of all of you: If you meet her on the street, talk to her on the phone, or (more likely) encounter her on the internet, tell her Happy Graduation! Exactly that way, with the exclamation point. She deserves it. I really enjoyed our time at IPFW, but I just sat there in the lounge areas with my laptop and wrote—she went through four years of real work.

Meanwhile, obviously, I’m going to take her out to dinner. We don’t go out to dinner often—see above about issues with spending money—but this is a major league screw up. We’re not talking Applebee’s screw up … we’re talking Red Lobster screw up.

            This is secretly fine with me, as I love their steak and they have biscuits I’d happily kill for. But it’s important to make her think it’s a major inconvenience that I’m doing just to make her happy, along the lines of holding her purse while she shops for clothes.

            Maybe I’ll hold her purse in Red Lobster. I wonder how many biscuits would fit in there?

 

My wife studies hard. Especially in this case, when studying our wedding license for loopholes ... just in case.