Right now, I’m sitting in the shade under a huge oak tree on campus waiting for my Spanish I orientation to begin, or at least open the door to the lecture hall. As Monk would say, “here’s what happened.”
I got to campus an hour early because I knew it was going to be a large class because the roster online showed more than 150 people and outlets for laptops are scarce. Of course, being Saturday, the door to the lecture hall was locked so I looked for a bench and found one in the shade about 100 feet from the door.
Ten minutes later, a couple of people (based on age and behavior comparison of the two, I’d say a mother and daughter) came up the walk, looped around in front of the door a couple of times, tried the door, and then kept walking. One would assume that any normal person (like said person on the bench in the shade) would find a bench in the shade and wait for the door to open since they were 50 minutes early.
Not these two. In an act of brilliance, they decided that they would do an entire lap around the building and try to go into Burger King (closed at 9am on Saturday) to look for a rear entrance to the hall. They returned with a campus map open like tourists and I could hear them say, “ULH 101. This is the building and room. Why isn’t it open?” I’ll give them one guess, but I think they need more than that.
Around they go for another lap and stop a woman with her iPod on her arm clearly on a fast stroll to burn calories to ask her why the building isn’t open. As exercise woman passed me, she gave me a morning greeting and told me they were looking for another entrance to the building. I told her that they were 40 minutes early for a Saturday orientation; she laughed and kept walking.
On their next lap and attempt to open a locked door, I shouted over to them that was indeed the entrance and that it was still locked because they were 40 minutes early for the first class of the day on a Saturday. I should have kept my mouth shut, because they walked over to me to sit on a nearby bench and ask if I was a part of the orientation. Then if I was Wesley or someone like that. Immediately telling them I wasn’t but wondering why they assumed I was Wesley, I figured he was a T.A. for the course and resorted to putting in my headphones to stop the insanity.
By the way, according to the roll call, they are mother/daughter. Freaky. I guess age didn’t give Mom an advantage and chronological proximity to high school life didn’t give the daughter an advantage.
Life lesson: a college degree doesn’t mean that much for reasoning or practical functioning.
