Take your Mother to School Day '06

Trixie's back in town, and since I spend most of my day in Berkeley, she agreed to come with me and spend another day auditing my classes. Last year, she found the experience sort of interesting. She thought she followed most of the lectures, and when she couldn't that in itself was kind of gratifying because it allows her to say to herself "Hey, look what I made!" I took her around with me on my various morning errands, to work, to a study group that failed to materialize, and then to the computer lab, where I introduced her to the Cookie Man. She was uncharacteristically mellow with him. I thought it she was off her game because she had a cold, but I later learned that she was had been distracted because she was mentally compiling a list of people to fix him up with. Typhoid Yente rides again.

Given last year's episode with the gum and with the ogling of my professors, I decided to prep Mom before taking her to my noon lecture. I checked that her phone was turned off. I made her promise not to unwrap anything. I figured we were alright. About twenty minutes into the lecture, I noticed my professor staring at the seat next to mine with a peculiar expression. I looked over and saw that Trixie had donned sunglasses and decided to take a little nap in the third row. She apparently felt that shades were a good cover. Mariana, one of my classmates who was seated on the other side of Trixie, later said it was reminiscent of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer tries to hide behind glasses with open eyes painted on them while serving on a jury. I haven't seen it.