buy maple mesos ‘ ‘Technically
the more obscene jokes were saved for the ginseng farmers. But I remember once in seventh grade, our
homeroom teacher had gone around the class and asked us what our fathers did. When she got to Eileen Reilly,
Eileen turned red and said, ‘I would rather not say.’ This astounded me, for her father was a handsome, charming
salesman at Home Savings Shoes on Main Street’Stan the Shoe Man,buy maple mesos, my mother affectionately called him. But
his daughter had absorbed some disappointment’his, or her mother’s’and did not want to speak of how he earned
his living.
Perhaps that was the moment I learned this as a source of personal shame, or observed the possibility of it.
‘So your classes then,’ said my father. ‘Sit down on this lovely Christmas morning and tell your old dad about
the ones you took and the ones you’re going to take when you go back. How did that philosophy class go?’
‘Did you know that Alexander the Great left all his money to Aristotle?’ I asked brightly.
‘That’s how he got his name,’ said my father. ‘Aristotle gave it to him! Before that he was just Alexander the
Fine.’
‘Bo! Sheesh.’ My mother shook her head.
A sizzling sound came from the griddle, where she was pouring oil. We had an old-style stove, with the griddle
built in. You had to clean it with rags and paper towels, or pry it out with a barbecue fork and go at it with steel
wool and water. The hot latke mix steaming into the air now smelled good to me and helped cover up the
kitchen’s perennially faint reek of mice. My mother was stirring regular pancake batter as well.
‘It’s OK to sit while you help,’ said my mother to me, ‘but remember these latkes aren’t hamburgers. Don’t cup
them into thick shapes.’
I ignored her and continued with my fat latkes and my dad.
‘Next term?’ he asked.
‘I’ve registered for another literature survey’Brit Lit from 1830 to 1930′Intro to Sufism, Intro to Wine Tasting, a
music appreciation course titled Soundtracks to War Movies, and a geology course called Dating Rocks.’ The
Sufism did not throw him.
‘Dating rocks?’
‘I need to learn!’ I said, laughing.
‘Don’t let them kiss you,’ he said, not smiling. The random assortment of my courses lacked the sound of serious
direction. I’d left out my PE requirement,runescape money, which I was filling with a double-listed humanities and Pilates course
called The Perverse Body/The Neutral Pelvis. I didn’t want to provoke him.
Still, I murmured, as if in self-pity, ‘They don’t kiss. That’s why they’re called rocks.’
‘Wine tasting?’ He raised his eyebrows. It had the sound of a father not getting his money’s worth.
‘I need a gut course, to make the others go better,’ I said. ‘I didn’t really have one this past semester, and things
were too intense.’
‘But aren’t you underage?’
‘Technically, I guess. But it’s for a course,maplestory mesos, so I guess they let you.’
‘Will you make dean’s list again?’ asked my mother.
‘Possibly,’ I said.
‘Well,cheap star trek credits, you have to be careful which dean,’ said my father. ‘You don’t want to get on the wrong list!’
‘Besides, I’m going to be working next semester.’
‘You got a job?’