I'm Sinking!

I hate it when I get myself into a conversation that I just cannot escape from. At our building we have parking in the front for several hundred cars and a parking lot on the east side of the building, next to the WalMart, that can accommodate about thirty or forty cars. If you park in front, you can use the main entrance which has the guard station. In the side lot there is a card-access gate entrance to the building. I prefer to park on the side and use the gate. The only downside is having to walk past all the smokers from the call centers upstairs, but I can come and go largely unnoticed, so it is worth holding my breath for a few seconds. Now if I could just hold my tongue. This morning when I arrived and walked to the entrance, there was a woman fumbling in her purse at the gate. I assumed she couldn't find her access card, so being a charming and witty guy, I said, "If you swear you're not a terrorist, I'll let you in." The woman turned toward me and I was struck by two things. She is really heavy, which I had already noticed and she had a burning cigarette stuck in her mouth. Oh yeah, and she had a huge ring through her lip, so I guess that's three things. She tells me thanks and adds that not having her access card is a problem because since she smokes, she needs to get in and out the back door several times throughout the day. Again, not knowing when to just shut up, I ask her if she is aware that smoking will kill you? She says that she does, but says that since she eats so unhealthily, she might as well smoke too. I reflect on the logic in that for a second. Then, of course, I just plow on like a jackass, sinking deeper and deeper into this morass. "Are you under the impression that smoking somehow counteracts bad nutrition?", I ask. "Look", she says, "I eat crap, I smoke, I'm fat. I can keep on or just jump in a river without a life vest. It is all the same thing." I think a nanosecond about how to respond, tempted to ask her if those are really the only two choices, but I finally rein in my big yap, wish her a good day and scram. Talk about your weird encounters. I was struck by her cynical attitude about her own health, but then who am I to hand out health advice, since I am pretty heavy myself and show little inclination to slim down any? I am also having this email exchange with a guy who is way smarter than me, about the public vs. private school debate. The question is, which is better for learning? A couple of researchers did a study that says that if you control for the variables that are beyond the control of the public schools, their quality of instruction is equal that of private schools. The variables that are controlled for are socioeconomic factors, like poverty, unstable living arrangements, students with special needs, etc. What this says to me is that if public schools didn't have all these problems, they wouldn't lag behind. I guess I didn't need a study to tell me that and it seems unlikely to cause many people to return their kids to public schools. I think this fellow I am corresponding with thinks I am critical of the public schools. I am not. We get exactly what we demand of the public schools. We insist that they teach kids who don't want to be there and whose parents don't care. We ask them to compensate for many of society's failings and we hamstring them in many ways. I support public schools but I understand why people pull their kids out of them. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor