Smile and nod

Do you see them drawing plays in the dirt?!?

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I once had a longer than normal discussion about the definition of a full-ride. Eventually realized that my friend defined a full ride as a full tuition scholarship. Now I just as you say smile and nod when that comes up.

My wife’s cousin was telling me about his nephew getting a scholarship to go an ivy.

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The good news is it’s not just about colleges.

People who can memorize an entire, complex bracket for March Madness don’t know the difference between an ATM card and getting a cash advance on a debit card (hint- one costs money and the other doesn’t). People who can rattle off every single statistic for their fantasy sports league- going back years- and don’t know the difference between a primary and an election. And of course- people who can remember the identify, significant others, shoe size of every Kardashian plus their hangers-on but who don’t know who their Senator is (usually followed by “It’s so confusing”. You want to say- Not confusing- every state has two!)

I volunteered as a voting registrar for a few years and it was sad (heartbreaking actually).

So I’m fine with folks mixing up Penn State and U Penn, or thinking that GW and Wash U are the same institution just with different nicknames. There are SO many other things with greater import to worry about!

(My favorite reason for someone not being registered to vote- “It’s takes too long to fill out the form”. And I’d say “but I’m standing right here with the form, all you need to do is pop your name and address on top and sign the form and you’re done!” and the response would be “Maybe next year if there’s an election I care about”.) Really- you don’t care about your property taxes going up (that’s a constant) or the local HS being shut down for months because a contract was awarded to crook without a competitive bidding process (another constant) or nationally- is there a SINGLE election that doesn’t impact your life, livelihood, equanimity in some way?.

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Back around Dec 15th I tried to explain to a relative about how most local kids we know got rejected from their ED/EA top tier schools. I must have said something like “Everyone is getting rejected”. Now, every time he hears about a kid getting accepted anywhere he makes a point of telling me that I was wrong and “not everybody is getting rejected”. I can’t bear to explain to him yet again about the difference between schools with an 80% acceptance rate and those with an 8% acceptance rate.

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“The top kids at my high school have a 50-75% chance of admission at any of the top schools.”

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I once worked as a voter registrar. I was about 19. I enjoyed it, but I remember thinking that some people are ridiculously lazy and apathetic.

Yesterday I had a window salesman around for a quote. He was very old school, and not in a good way. In his heyday, he was probably a 70’s “male chauvinist pig”, which is the old fashioned way of saying “misogynist.” He had to insert my name into every other phrase he uttered. I almost thought he would say “now now, Mrs. Lindagaf, I’d talk to your husband if he was here.”

I smiled and nodded. Someone else will get my business.

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Asked a friend if he got the COVID vaccine. He said no because he was afraid of needles, as I noticed the large tattoo on his arm.

I was tempted to ask if it was a press on but decided not to.

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Hilarious (but very, very sad).

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@gpo613

Yep. Family member here proudly announced that Wellesley “gave” their kid $10,000. I said nothing.

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If it weren’t for Affirmative Action, my kid would have gotten into Harvard.

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Yeah, this. It’s like they don’t ever wonder what the many many other (white, asian) kids who did get in might have, that their own kid does not, but they have an excess of curiosity about what the (URM) kids must be missing. Ugh.

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Are they natural was a question asked a lot with my twins? I started to answer no - they are holograms, aliens, fake babies…depending on my mood and mainly just smiled and walked away.

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I think the line from Seinfeld, albeit in a different context, is “they’re real and they’re spectacular!”

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When a baby, my daughter really had very little hair. We dressed her in very frilly pink clothing, and sometimes I actually taped a bow to her head (those nice bow headbands weren’t a thing).

I can’t tell you how many times people asked me about my baby boy🙄

We had the same experience with my D!

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Or “what a cute little boy”:woman_facepalming:t2::woman_facepalming:t2:

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Yep! My D was bald until she was one but we mostly dressed her in cute dresses with headbands. So many people would comment about “what a cute little boy”. I’m all for not gendering children based on clothing but really???

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When a guy years ago found out my son was going to UVA for engineering, he asked me why he was going to UVA , not Virginia Tech if he wanted to study engineering.

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Haha! I have boy/girl twins, and the number of times I have been asked if they are identical is really frightening. Then when I say it’s not possible, they get all confused. Smile and nod…

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Just say “not when they are naked”

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