Mind Your Own God Damn Business

Good lord, it’s not even midnight yet. I’m edging closer and closer to getting these posts up on time again.

There’s a good reason why, too:

This article right here. According to this magnificent article, a recent study suggests that relationships where the wife is AT LEAST five years younger and also smarter than the husband lead to marriages that are more likely to succeed.

This is excellent fucking news for me.

For the last year, I’ve been bracing for a long, unpleasant period of limited human contact. Going back to school and working as a sub on my off days means that I spend most of my day hanging out with college kids who are almost a decade younger than me or middle school students, neither of which make for very solid social contacts.

K-12 kids scare the shit out of me, because all it takes is one accusation that Mr. Castle offered to give them back their cell phone if they gave him a blow job to pretty much ruin any chance I have of ever teaching (or living somewhere that’s not jail). Because of this, I have no interest, and actually a healthy amount of terror about hanging out with students outside of class.

Oh Pancho. I'll never forget whatever it is that you did after finding your name when I googled "1989".

College kids are cooler, of the age of consent and not in a position of trust with me, but there’s just one problem: I’m now the token goofy old guy in the back of the classroom that doesn’t ever quite know what the fuck is going on. Every class has one, and now it’s me. On top of that, even by my remarkably low standards for maturity, a lot of college kids still fall short, and what I mean by “They’re not mature” is “They don’t get pop culture references that predate their birth”.

I could probably chat with these kids without talking about how much Mr. T hates flying, or how Flava Flav is in this really kickass band called Public Enemy, or how I remember exactly when and where I heard the terrible news that Pedro Vargas, Mexican singer and actor, had passed away (thank you, Wikipedia), but you know what I say to that? GET OFF MY LAWN. Let me paint a terrifying picture for all of you: Any mention to a college kid of anything that happened before about 1998 is pretty much always met with a blank stare. Do you want to know why? BECAUSE THEY WERE 8. PEOPLE WHO WERE BORN IN 1990 ARE NOW 19 YEARS OLD. How the hell am I supposed to talk to these kids when they don’t even know who Milli Vanilli is!?!?

All of this adds up to me spending most of my time during the week feeling kind of isolated and lonely.

At least, that’s what I originally thought would happen. That hasn’t really been the case, though.

First of all, I may be old, but I’m really, really immature. As a result, I’ve started making some college friends. Maybe we can’t agree whether Jem was or wasn’t truly, truly outrageous, but if the teacher asks what we think of government intervention and a student in the front row tells us that he’s a teabagger, well, let’s just say that we see eye to eye. Not only that, after we’ve wiped the tears from our eyes and finished laughing at the mental image of the guy up front gently placing his balls in someone else’s mouth, I get bonus points for knowing that he was actually talking about his opposition to taxes and his belief that government intervention is always bad under any condition, because it leads to tragedies like public roads, a national defense system, social programs that helped get us out of the great depression, child labor laws, trust-busting and even a subsidized college education that everyone in the classroom is enjoying the benefits of.

This woman has certainly done an effective job of drumming up support for her cause; after reading that sign, I'm ready to do a little bit of tea bagging of my own. I'm not opposed to doing some pearl necklacing, either, if it helps get my point across.

Second of all, after reading that article, I’ve learned the truth about college girls. I shouldn’t be avoiding them. I should be proposing to them! Consider these facts:

- The article says that the girl should be at LEAST five years younger than the guy. I’ve got this one covered and then some! The average college senior is, what – 21? 22? That’s eight years younger than I am! I mean, it took me twice as long to graduate as it should have, and I got my degree at 25. Even if someone in one of my classes is as catastrophically bad at school as I am, I’m still in the clear!

- The girl needs to be smarter than me. Again, this is not a problem. In all of my political science classes, I’m surrounded by girls who are about to graduate with political science degrees. A few of them are doing internships for state politicians. Most of them are getting ready for grad school. They do things like read The Economist and compete in Model Arab League for fun. I don’t think we have to worry too much about me being smarter than any of them.

My evening classes, which are geography and history for freshmen, are a slightly different story – Some of the girls in there are a little goofy because they’re so young, and some of them are retarded enough that I can tell that they’re going to be doing a lot of waitressing over the next few decades. It doesn’t sound good, but consider this: I’m 30, living in my parent’s basement and deliberately maintaining a blog that I can almost guarantee will eventually cause me legal trouble of some kind. Can I really claim that I’m smarter than these girls? I don’t think I can.

I’ve got this all worked out. I’ll be sitting in class. As soon as I see a girl who’s reading a book or wearing glasses (both surefire guarantees that someone is smart), I’ll walk over and strike up a conversation. After loosening her up with a few of my never-miss jokes referencing Back To The Future and those Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef!?” ads, I’ll drop the hammer: “So, you seem a lot younger than me. We should go back to my parent’s place. And get married. The Internet says it’ll work.”

I’ve done my math and checked it twice, and there’s only one way that a girl can respond to a line like that:

“I do”.

See you Friday.