His Life of Education Seems to Hurt Me Some

You know in the original True Grit, when Kim Darby as Mattie Ross tells John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, "I will not bandy words with a drunkard"...Sure you do! Doesn't everybody know that classic Academy Award winner well enough to quote it line by line? If you don't, shame on you! You might as well be unable to retrieve any miniscule Seinfeld factoid from your memory.

Well, ol' Mattie Ross had a point there. I do not ride to school with a drunkard every day, but I ride with a reasonable facsimile: a 17-year-old know-it-all without even the common decency to ride shotgun beside me. It is next to impossible to engage in a meaningful conversation with somebody so disinterested sitting behind your head. We are on the verge of creating, unintentionally, a new "Who's On First?" routine.

"What was that? I heard something fall when I went around the curve."

"Nothing. Just the bag of trash."

"I want that cleaned out of here by tomorrow when we go by Aunt Sis's house. She already thinks this car is a rolling trash heap."

"I will. It's only been in here one day."

"WHAT? That bag of trash has been here for weeks."

"Noooo. Only since yesterday."

"You mean it's not full?"

"No. It's empty."

"Wait. Why would I hear it fall over if it was empty?"

"It didn't fall over. It fell off the seat."

"An empty trash bag can't fall off the seat and make a noise. It's a Walmart sack."

"I'm not talking about the trash bag."

"Yes you are! That's what you told me fell off."

"No. I said it was the bag of trash."

"I know!"

"Um. I'm going to throw it away today. I didn't yesterday, because there wasn't room in the trash bag."

"What are you talking about?"

"The bag of trash."

"Exactly!"

"No. They are not the same thing."

"So let me get this straight...the bag of trash fell off the seat and is empty, but the trash bag is too full."

"YES! Why can't you understand that?"

"It is useless trying to talk to you! You are definitely your father's son. You don't make a bit of sense."

"I told you yesterday, my bag of trash was empty! When you took me by Dairy Queen. I ate all my food. The paper bag is empty, just the wrappers are left. It won't fit in the trash bag, which is full. So I'm waiting to take it in the house when my hands aren't full. Why is that so hard to understand?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because I think a bag of trash and a trash bag are the same thing. Silly me."

"Uh huh."

When I think back on all the crap I learn from The Pony, it's a wonder I can think at all.