Off the record

Oh, the dreaded permanent record!  The first time I heard of it was in the sixth grade but I don't recall the context.  I thought it was a special piece of paper, locked away in the principal's office, that listed every little screwup.  It used to be that there wasn't one record but many little ones, stashed in file cabinets, shoeboxes, or wherever, and probably forgotten.  I doubt that such records will ever enter the digital realm...who would do all the data entry or scanning?  Maybe the eventual robot overlords will be up for the task.

-----

So Uncle Ken ran afoul of the local fuzz, who apparently didn't like citizens expressing positive feelings for nurses or kangaroos.  Chalk is a gateway instrument for further crime, y'know, maybe crayons would have been next.  Calling a few scrawls of chalk "destruction to public property" is a stretch, though.  They must have been very bored or thought they had a lead on busting the heinous Hopscotch Gang.

-----

There was only one time when I had to wait for Mom in a beauty  parlor, and it was hell.  Nothing interesting for a ten year old boy to read, nothing to do, and minimal, if any, air conditioning in the place.  I never thought of the hair dryers as part of the Mommy Network because we had the "little birds" snitching on us.

The hair dryers looked cool, though, like something out of Captain Video.  You'd think something like that would dry the hair in about fifteen seconds, but no. It took forever, so they must have been crap...unless they were used for data transfer.  Hmmm....

-----

The secret world of women has always baffled me, but I've learned not to ask questions; no good can come of it.  I suspect it has little to do with attracting men and is part of the process of establishing their own hierarchy, and I'll leave it at that.

As a new freshman in high school I knew that child's play was over.  More than half the girls wore nylon stockings every day and probably had their hair up in rollers every night.  That's a lot of extra work for young teens, but I can't say I didn't appreciate the fruits of their labors.  The visual distractions didn't help my grades, but what's a fella to do?