Tales from the Crypt

How does Meta Cranky know that she's become a crone? Let's count the ways. Could it be that she's the only mommy in the kindergarten hallway gallery whose hair is colored with a gray crayon? Perhaps the most recent Mother's Day card: "My mommy's name is Meta Cranky. She is 78 years old." Then there's that Wheatsville checker who looked at Herr (and Meta) Cranky's membership card and announced, with anthropologist-like fascination, that he was born after they joined the co-op. We could have told them that humans mated with Neanderthals! Heck--we lived down the street from Flying Aardvark and Runs Like a Girl!

Yet leave it to a faceless institution to deliver the unkindest cut. Here's the latest indignity: MC has contacted her alma mater to see whether it would like to charge her outrageous tuition to take a few classes. Since MC's path is generally the complicated one, she asked for, and received, especially helpful instructions from the helpful admissions office. In the process of dredging up MC's historic academic information, Ms. Helpful promised to call if her transcripts were no longer legible. "Come again?' asked MC. "The microfiche deteriorates over time. But that's OK. You'll have time to order a copy from the originals." The microfiche deteriorates over time? To paraphrase Ms. Helpful: MC has generated documents so old that they require special conservation techniques. Like an original reel of Birth of a Nation. Or a lovely French cave painting.

Wait, there's more: "That would include your transcript from A&M." Now this bit of information was fascinating, since MC never attended A&M, although she was once provisionally admitted to library school at UCLA (without applying!). The answer to that puzzler is that MC took a class at a school so long ago that the school's name has changed. Happens all the time. The creepiest part, however, is that MC has no memory of taking any class at that university. Herr Cranky still owns a working cerebral cortex, and he declares it was a Spanish class. If that's the case, then why doesn't MC speak Spanish?

MC chooses to see this loss of memory as an opportunity to create her own reality. Of course she took a summer Spanish class in 1984! If she digs around in the bottom of her purse, she'll find her diploma from the NASA cooking school and a pay stub from her part-time brain surgery gig. The one at the drive-thru clinic. You think she doesn't have a license to practice law? She'd show it to you, but the records burned up in that fire they had in San Francisco. You know, the one after the earthquake?
--MC