The first thing I hear on the radio this morning is the weather report. They're talking snow, like six inches. No way! I check the weather page and they are saying no such thing, just a little sleet maybe.
By the time I go in to class, I've forgotten about it, but my fellow students are buzzing. We sit in our seminar class (where showing up is 99% of everything) and consider the weather.
"It's not going to happen," I say.
"Oh yeah? But Pinocchio washed his car today," Ratso counters.
"You did?" I ask Pinocchio.
"Yeah. It looks really good now."
"How much did it cost?" Cali-boy asks a leading question. "Twenty dollars?"
"No! It was $16.99."
"You paid sixteen dollars for a car wash? You know, the Rainbow Wash is only like twenty cents," Ratso says.
"Yeah, but I didn't want to get out of my car."
"So that's the indicator of whether it's really going to snow? Pinocchio spends a lot of money on a car wash?" I ask.
"Yeah," Ratso says, as if I should have known.
Class begins and we subside. Since we sit in the far back corner of the auditorium, the others play with their phones and laptops during the lecture. Text messages fly. I notice that the young man in front of me has a girly picture on his phone. When I comment on this later, I am told "No, that's not porn, it's wallpaper. Completely different."
Ratso is surfing on his shoe phone (it's not actually a shoe phone, but it's almost as big as one; it's a sort of hand-sized mini-laptop). "Psst," he whispers to me and holds it up to display a satellite image of a massive storm front bearing down on Virginia. "See?"
296 words | February 23, 2005 10:19 PM | Ivory tower