florida moments

while waiting at the terminal…

I was drinking a fruit smoothy I brought along: brand name, Naked. I set it down on the coffee table, while we were waiting at our gate. My mom looks at it, turns it around, so the label was facing the wall, not the lobby, saying in Deutsch, we don’t want people to see that.” “Es sagt nackich.” (It says naked). Somehow it is much more schantlich (embarrassing and shocking) to say the word in English than to say its direct translation in German.

while waiting at the terminal…

Mom: What are you doing on your computer?

me: I’m writing.

Mom: For your blob?

me: (…after rolling on the floor, sides heaving with laughter, tears streaming from my eyes, everyone looking at us strangely.) ..., “Mom, it’s not a blob, it’s a blog.

my aunt: So what degree will you have now that you are done with, whatever it is that you have? What letters will you be able to put behind your name?

me: I’ll have a Masters of Arts in Theology. And I don’t know what letters that puts behind my name. I just know that I need to go to school for 4 more years to get my doctorate and then I can put Ph. D. behind my name.

my aunt: Oh, really! Then you should go to school for it, if that’s all it takes to become a doctor. We need a doctor to take care of us once we get old!

me: Well, I wouldn't be able to be that sort of doctor. It would be called something more like a Doctorate in Theology.

my aunt: That's not a real doctor!

The moral of the last two stories: No matter how “educated” or “advanced” one becomes, there will always be people who don’t recognize the “particular specialness” of the categories. And that is a good thing.