Oct. 28: Prop 26: Quixote rides again!

What follows is an Op-Ed piece I submitted to the school newspaper:

It has been interesting to follow the debate over Proposition 26, more commonly known at “The Personhood Amendment,’’ both in my encounters with those who are advocating for and against the ballot measure around campus and in the pages of the Reflector.

The previous opinion pieces published in The Reflector have considered this topic almost exclusively on moral and ethical grounds and it is highly unlike that anything I might add to the matter on those grounds would alter anyone’s view.

But I do believe there is another way of considering thistopic that is, at the very least, equally relevant.

As I consider the debate over Proposition 26, the more I begin to see it not merely as a debate over an issue that has divided Americans for the past 40 years, but as a microcosm of what makes Mississippi, well, Mississippi.

Last week, I spent some time observing two groups who were arguing on either side of Proposition 26. The Pro-26 and Anti-26 groups had set up shop just feet from each other on the Drill Field. I listened as advocates for both sides made their pitches to passer-by students. Predictably, each group
accused the other of distortions, disinformation and exaggerations.

Finally, I approached a member of each group and asked what would happen if the Proposition passed, which, I suspect, is the likely outcome.

After listening patiently to both parties, I am convinced that both sides are wrong.

What will happen if Proposition 26 passes?

Nothing.

Proposition 26, if passed, cannot be implemented because it will never pass Constitutional muster. State laws cannot usurp federal law and, clearly, Proposition 26 will certainly be challenged in the Courts and there is no reasonable expectation that it can meet the legal challenges.

Pro-26 advocates argue that they do have the Constitution on their side, noting that anything that any powers not implicitly given to the federal government are ceded to the states. But that argument has been repeatedly refuted over the decades. In fact, Mississippi, along with many other Southern states, used the “state’s rights’’ argument to secede from the Union in 1861 and later to fight Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. Obviously, the tactic failed miserably in both cases. The “State’s Rights’’ argument is a thin limb for Pro-26 supporters to cling to.

Mississippi is just one of 32 states that have proposed some sort of new definition on
“personhood,’’ which is primarily a legal strategy devised to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mississippi’s version is broader than most – too broad, it seems. Neither National Right to Life, the nation’s most prominent anti-abortion organization, or the Catholic Church, whose views on abortion have never been ambiguous, offer support for Mississippi’s amendment.

In fact, there is some belief that Mississippi’s proposition might ultimate damage the anti-abortion cause.

James Bopp Jr., the top lawyer for National Right to Life, told the New York Times that the amendment is  regrettable from a pro-life perspective. “From the standpoint of protecting unborn lives it’s utterly futile,” he said, “and it has the grave risk that if it did get to the Supreme
Court, the court would write an even more extreme abortion policy.”

So, no, I won’t be voting for Proposition 26 on grounds that have nothing to do with the moral and ethical implications it represents, but because it will serve no useful purpose.

I stated that if Proposition 26 passes, nothing will happen. But that’s not true, of course. Something will, indeed, happen. What willhappen is that Mississippi taxpayers will spend millions of dollars over the next decade fighting a legal battle whose outcome is about as predictable as an Ole Miss-Alabama football game – with the state playing the role of Ole Miss. And the state will spend
these millions of dollars at a time when it is busy slashing budgets for health, education and programs for the poor.

But that’s the way it’s always been with Mississippi: We seem incapable of fighting any battles other than the ones we are certain to lose. In the meantime, the issues that should command our attention are neglected while we wage against a quixotic war on hot-button issues that have
little real impact on the real issues that Mississippians have faced seemingly
forever.

I am native Mississippian, and 52 years old, a non-traditional student both chronologically and, I suspect, philosophically. All my life, Mississippi has ranked last (or first, provided being first means worst) on just about every measurable “quality of life’’ issue. That’s “Our State:’’ Last in education,
first in poverty, last in health care, first in obesity.

So what do our political leaders do when they consider Mississippi’s regrettable state? They push legislation on things like voter ID, abortion, gun laws, etc. – measure that appeal only to passions, but do little – nothing,really – to move Mississippi up or down any of those lists. It’s almost as if our “leaders’’ are simply shrugging their shoulders and saying, “well, somebody’s gotta be last, right?
Might as well be us.’’

And yet the same people – or different people with the same views – are elected over and over again.

I hope to live long enough to see a real leader emerge in our state someday, someone who has real ideas and is determined to focus on that list and move Mississippi, at long last, in a hopeful direction. Of course, how he will be elected is another matter entirely.

Mississippi is like a house with a badly leaking roof. Our leaders respond by calling for
bigger pots.

If futility could be ranked, I know just where Mississippi would stand on that list.
Proposition 26 is  just the latest example.

Slim Smith is a seniorCommunications major from Tupelo.

Sept. 20: "Is Plato right?''

A sneak peek at my magazine column for October:



Professor Holt stood in front on his History of Western Philosophy class and posed a question that compelled the 32 students to diligently study their shoes.

It was not a philosophical question.

“How many of you read what I assigned last time?’’ he asked.

One student raised his hand. The hand belonged to the old guy who always goes to class early, sits up front, takes copious notes and never sends text messages during class. (Hate that guy!)

Dr. Holt’s eyes settled on me.

“You did?’’ he asked in a tone of wonder. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you drink beer all weekend like normal people?’’

And so it is in the world of Dr. Holt’s History of Western Philosophy class, where good is a curiosity and bad is to be expected.

For the first few weeks of class, I had pretty much made up my mind that Dr. Holt was the worst sort of teacher you could have. Now, I am convinced he is the finest kind.

He is, in some respects the caricature of the eccentric college professor. He is perpetually flustered, utterly disorganized and has an almost pathological hatred of dry-erase markers. The markers are forever running out of ink as he writes rather maniacally his Greek phrases on the big white board up front. About every five minutes, an unworthy marker goes flying across the room, followed by what can only be assumed is a string of Greek curse words.

Yet for all his imagined flaws, there is one indictment that no student will ever make against him: Dr. Dale Holt absolutely loves Philosophy.

His enthusiasm for it, his endless fascination, seems to shoot from his fingertips and the ends of his graying hair. In fact, this passion is so boundless that he often leaps from one complicated idea or theory to another, leaving a wake of ancient philosophers behind like dust from the back of a pick-up truck. We students, hardly any of us philosophy majors, struggle mightily in a futile attempt to keep up.

In short, he loves Philosophy like I love the newspaper business – even after I got kicked out of the newspaper business.

I was afraid I would fail the class. But then Dr. Holt revealed a little secret, which I was able to confirm by talking to previous students in his class: His tests are impossibly simple. He only gives two of them, a mid-term and a final.

On the class website he posted a “sample test,’’ that he says are a pretty fair representation of the real tests.

One sample question:

One of the first conceptual difficulties to be faced when studying the history of philosophy is:

A. Determining what your subject matter is: that is, answering the question, “What is philosophy?’’

B. Deciding whether to buy the book or sponge off my classmates.

C. Stockpiling enough caffeinated soft drinks to see me through the semester.

So you can see, Dr. Holt is not too hung up on tests and grades and those sorts of things.

And yet, I find that after five weeks of classes I am somehow learning more in his class than in all of my other classes, where tests and grades are serious business and the student is inclined to gorge on facts primarily for the purpose of regurgitating them at the appointed test times. I find that I am beginning to love philosophy whereas Spanish III, for example, leaves me cold and uncaring.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been studying Plato’s Republic. Maybe it is a combination of Plato’s brilliance and Dr. Holt’s enthusiasm for the subject, but whatever the reason I find that I am fascinated by it. In fact, so revealing has it been that I am embarrassed to note that my first exposure to it came at the age of 52. It’s like discovering a thing that, to your surprise, has been pretty much common knowledge to everyone else for years and years. Like Facebook, for example.

In The Republic, in case you haven’t read it or the intervening years have dulled your memory, Plato – speaking through his mentor, Socrates – seeks to define “justice’’ during an argument with his friends. Socrates’ friends, it seems to me, are almost always insufferable prigs. No wonder he wound up drinking poison. I rather imagine it would be like being trapped in a never-ending Tea Party rally.

In seeking to define justice, Plato constructs a city he calls the “just city,’’ where everyone has a well-defined role and is committed to performing the duties of that role.

The end result would be a society where each is given what is his due and each person’s work is devoted to what is best for the city as a whole.

Socrates’ friends listen to his theory carefully and it occurs to them that the “just city’’ would likely be met with some fierce opposition, for it is, in many ways, far from Utopian.

How would Socrates propose to deal with the protests that his concept would surely prompt?

Paraphrasing here, Socrates says you would pretty much have to kill anyone over the age of 8 and start all over.

Clearly, Plato was not really constructing what he considered to be a perfect society. He was merely using it as a model to define the complicated idea of justice.

But more and more I wonder if Plato’s solution – made in jest – is about the only solution we have left to fix what is wrong with our own country these days.

I don’t suppose we could really kill everyone over the age of 8, although I do have a pretty good idea of who I would start with.

But I do wonder if we have reached the point where we are so divided that we cannot grasp any real solutions.

The best example I can think of came on the night the President made his speech on the Jobs Bill.

Within five minutes of the close of his speech, I noted sadly that many of my friends on Facebook had already torn in it apart.

“It’s all about unions and redistributing the wealth,’’ one posted.

Another suggested that the job bill was merely a tool to create a socialist state.

Yet another said it was “just another bailout.’’

This seems a horribly wondrous thing to me, that common, everyday people would be able to divine and analyze the bill within mere minutes.

I asked each of those folks if they had read the bill.

Of course, they had not, mainly because there was no bill to read at that point.

Will the president’s job bill work? I have no idea. But I would like to think that all of us have suffered enough to at least approach it with an open mind.

To me, our situation is like falling off a ship far out at in the ocean. In that circumstance, you will try anything you judge might possibly float and you will keep trying things until you find something that does. I can scarcely believe that a rational person, flailing away in a vast sea, would see an object close at hand and began to theorize on that object’s ability to support his weight. I don’t think he would be too worried about the source of this object, either. No, I believe that he would approach it hopefully and put it to the test, laying aside his skepticism for the moment.

But we Americans seem to have lost that capacity. I sincerely believe we would rather drown.

I am no apologist for the President, I should point out. He seems to lack one essential quality: The ability to lead.

But I wonder, too, if anyone has that ability. I rather doubt it. The Right devours the Left and Left devours the Right. We are consuming ourselves. We are torn and bloodied and in rags, but hey, our dogma survives, unmolested and robust as ever.

Sometimes, I think it’s simply a matter that we haven’t reached the real crisis yet. Oh, I know you will hear people screaming from the rooftops that America has reached the point of desperation. And yet, just watch: As soon as a new “i-Whatever’’ comes on the market, millions of sorely-pressed Americans will stand in line for hours to throw hundreds of dollars at the cashier.

It’s one thing to theorize about going hungry. It’s quite another to actually go hungry.

Maybe that’s what it will take, ultimately. Maybe we’ll all have to suffer – really suffer – to the point where we are willing to try anything to see if it will float.

We’re not there yet.

I have a feeling we’ll get there soon enough, though.

I don’t see any other way, really, sort of an epidemic of common sense.

But as long as the question remains “Which Party is more Evil?’’ rather than “What will we do about supper?’’ we are at an impasse.

We would rather gouge each other’s eyes out than listen to what the other person has to say.

Maybe Plato was right. Maybe all that can be done is to start over.

But how?

Sept. 5: "Back in the game?''

I saw a lot more of the Ole Miss campus than I intended on Saturday.
Back in Oxford to report on a football game for the first time in more than 18 years, I found that the campus was just enough of a blend of old and new to leave me thoroughly confused.

I spent about an hour weaving through the narrow, pedestrian-clogged streets that surrounded Vaught-Hemingway Stadium trying to find the Media parking lot, which had been moved to a different location over the ensuing two decades.

When the sports editor at my old newspaper, the Biloxi Sun Herald, asked me to cover the game, I had no trepidation. I don’t know how many football games I’ve covered in almost 30 years in the newspaper business, so I wasn’t sweating this one. After all, it was a 3:45 p.m. game, so the prospect of a tight deadline - a sports writer’s primary stress-producer - wasn’t in play.

But, of course, first I had to actually get into the stadium.

I succeeded, I am happy to report, and I’ll know right where to go next time.

I found the Media entrance to the stadium with no difficulty and stepped into the elevator that would take me to the press box. The young student whose job it was to shuttle folks up and down to the various levels of the stadium, nodded and smiled.

“That’s what I want to do,’’ she said warmly, pointing at press pass attached to my shirt.

“Huh?’ I said.

“Be a sports reporter,’’ she expanded.

“Oh,’’ I said. “Well, good for you. That’s wonderful.’’

The response I really had in mind was, “Don’t you think going from elevator operator to sports reporter is sort of a lateral move?’’ But then I remembered how excited I was at the prospects of being a bona fide, paid-to-do-it sports writer all those years ago. So I suppressed the urge to speak candidly.

“Good luck!’’ I said as the elevator door opened at the press box level and I stepped out.

The game-day staff at Ole Miss, much like you will find throughout the South, is impossibly polite, friendly and accommodating, so the warm reception I received mitigated a slight nervousness that I began to feel as I stepped into the press box.

It was the assignment that made me nervous, obviously. It was just being back in this old familiar setting after so many years away.

I’ve been back in Mississippi for almost nine months now and, during that time, the word has spread among my old sports-writing colleagues of not only my return, but the circumstances that surrounded it. This was the first occasion I’d have to see any of them.

In a word, awkward.

“Hey, Slim! Good to see you,’’ said Parish, who I once interviewed for a reporter job about 20 years ago when I was sports editor in Biloxi. “I heard you were back…’’

There was a moment of nervous silence. He seemed to be struggling for the right words to say. Then, finally: “I’m sorry to hear about your, uh, troubles.’’

“Yeah, I almost never found the media parking lot,’’ I answered with a wink.

Of course, that was not the “troubles’’ my old colleague was trying to find a tactful way to acknowledge. But I was just as eager to leave to subject alone as he was.

Most of the other old acquaintances seemed happy enough to leave the subject –un-broached. But I did notice there was one fella who kept giving me an odd look, both in the press box and later, in the Ole Miss interview room. As I was walking back to the press box after the interviews were over, he finally approached and introduced himself.

Turns out, he’s been around Mississippi for as long as I have, working mainly at small weekly papers. To my knowledge, I had never met him. I certainly didn’t recognize him. But somehow, he knew me.

“Where have you been?’’ he asked.

It was just the sort of question I had been rehearsing my answer for as I drove to Oxford.

“Santa Rosa, San Francisco, Arizona, Prison,’’ I said. “Three of ‘em were job related.’’

He did not seem to know what to make of my answer, really. So he started talking about the facilities at Ole Miss, about how much they had changed since my last visit. I feel sort of bad about the way I responded now. It was sort of a blunt way to put and he had asked the question innocently enough.

Since returning to school, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about what to do next. It’s still an open question, to be honest. I figured the first order of business was to get that degree I didn’t think I’d need 30 years ago when I dropped out of school. But I’ll graduate in eight months. Then what? The idea of law school appeals to me on some level. Getting my Masters and teaching seems like a reasonable idea, if someone is inclined to hire someone with my background (the bad part, I mean).

Then again, I could always do this – sports writing. I figure I could get a low-paying job at a small paper and start over. There is certainly some comfort level in this profession: I know I can do a credible job.

But do I want to?

A few years before I went to prison, I left sports journalism to write news columns, mainly because I began to realize that the people in the grandstands were a lot more interesting to me than the people on the playing field.

So do I really want to go back to that? I don’t know. It’s fun, to a certain degree. But still…

As we were waiting for some of the Ole Miss players to arrive in the interview room after the game, I ran into another old colleague. I want divulge his name, but he is a few years older than me and has been covering sports in the South for more than 30 years. He’s widely regarded for his writing ability, too, and is treated with deference by even the most elite of coaches.

We stood there, not speaking, just waiting for the player we wanted to talk to, when he said in a weary tone of voice, “I’m so tired of this s—t.’’

He didn’t have to elaborate. I knew precisely what he meant.

A lot of people would be inclined to think that being a sports writer is a dream job.

But you do it long enough and the new wears off and the endless demands of driving all over creation to get to games, the sometimes crazy deadlines, the long hours of weekend duty, the surprisingly fragile egos of the athletes and coaches you deal with on a regular basis, the complete lack of perspective and proportion of fans and the low pay begins to grind you down and you get cynical, bitter even. Mostly, though, you just get “tired of this s--t.’’

So that’s the dilemma: Do I start at the bottom doing something I do well with the distinct possibility that I might get soon completely sick of it? Or do I step away from what I do best to pursue some vague possibility that might end up just as empty?

I just don’t know.

In the meantime, going to games is fun and it puts a few bucks in my pocket.

For now, that’s all I really know.

Aug. 21: "Two of Life's Great Mysteries''

For some time now, I’ve been able to escape what, for a 52-year-old man, is the often surreal atmosphere of life as a college student to do some country living on the weekends.

Granted, Starkville, Miss., is not located in a sprawling urban metropolis. Nor does Mississippi State University lack a certain bucolic quality. There are plenty of open green spaces and ancient shade trees around campus.

Still, these weekend escapes to rural Pickens County, Alabama (somewhat a redundancy, since the whole county is more or less rural) have been a salve for the vagaries my new life as an old student. Out here on the Price homestead, where you have to drive five miles to find a paved road, things just don’t seem to rush at you. You have a chance to study something in detail because it's usually in no great hurry. Except for the hummingbirds, who even mate in mid-flight. Guessing you probably didn't know that.

This weekend, I cut down some small trees near the creek where the family goes fishing and stages parties from time to time. I cut some grass and spread some ant poison on some enormous ant hills that had been built in the roots of several of the great old oaks that surround Joy’s little cottage.

I also, pulled up a dead shrub by tying a rope a round it, attaching the other end of the rope to the trailer hitch of the old Ford 150 pick-up and yanking it out, roots and all. That was more fun than you would probably ever suspect. Here’s an oddity, though: It took four feet of dirt to fill the one-foot hole where the shrub used to be.

So it was a hot, busy, sweaty-stained weekend. At my age, this sort of work requires frequent breaks, usually taken under the closest available shade. Two hours into the day, I was already soaked with sweat, having sweated through my jeans even. The bandana I tied around my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes, when rung out, could fill a fruit jar, it seemed. But it’s a good kind of dirty sweat, somehow. It just feels good, in a way I am at a loss to explain.

I did run one errand during the weekend, driving over to Carrolton, the closest town, to buy some night-crawlers and crickets, just in case somebody decided to go fishing.

“There’s a cricket basket in the truck shed,’’ Joy told me.

So I grabbed the cricket basket and headed for town.

Joy had told me I could buy the worms and crickets at the little grocery store in town. I looked around the store, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might be where you would keep bait. Finally, I approached the checkout counter and asked the man behind the counter if they had crickets for sale.

“Crickets?'’ the man said in an accent I recognized as being Indian (by Indian I mean the big country in Asia).

“Yes, crickets,’’ I said.

The man made a motion as if he were swinging a cricket paddle. “That kind of cricket?’’ he asked.

“No,’’ I said. “I mean for fishing.’’

“No. I am sorry. We don’t sell them.’’

Fortunately, another customer had arrived at the counter as I was having this discussion with the clerk.

“You can get crickets at the One-Stop, I think,’’ she said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to go to Pickensville.’’

I’m not sure where Pickensville is located, but the woman said it as if it were a long drive. So I was relieved to discover that you can buy crickets (and worms) at One-Stop in Carrolton.

The man at the One-Stop took my cricket basket and returned a few minutes later with 100 (or so) crickets in my basket.

“The worms are in the refrigerator over there,’’ he said.

Driving back to the Price homestead, I looked over at the little round wire mess basket, full of crickets.

It’s a funny thing, really. I’ve seen and used cricket baskets since I was a little kid.

But somehow, two marvelous thoughts came to me as I drove along the little blacktop highway.

First, why don’t the crickets just hop out of the basket? Second, and this is probably even a greater mystery, who figured out they wouldn’t?

On the outside chance that you don’t know about cricket baskets, a description is necessary. A cricket basket (it can be round or square) is made of wire mess and is about 12 inches tall. Here’s where the mysterious part comes in. There is no lid on the basket, only a sleeve, usually plastic, that fits inside. Even so, the opening at the top is large enough for even the biggest hand to fit into to retrieve a cricket.

Now, I know enough about crickets to understand that even the most ancient, infirmed of crickets can jump a good 18 inches. Any cricket could, at least in theory, stand at the bottom of the cricket basket and hop straight up out of the opening in the top of the basket and escape to freedom.

But they never do.

But here’s the more interesting part. Someone – no one will likely ever know who – figured this out and designed a basket for keeping crickets that didn’t have a lid. The idea of a container without a lid used specifically to keep something inside that has the ability - not to mention the desire - to get out seems to defy all logical thinking.

In my mind, it is one of the great inventions of all time, not because of its contribution to society – which, at best, is marginal – but rather because it is so contrary to any conventional way of thinking.

As far as I know, there have been no real technological advances in this field. Long ago, somebody figured this out and they’ve been making cricket baskets pretty much the same way ever since.

When you buy a cricket basket, you do not have to work about a 4G version of it hitting the market next month. Strangely, that idea appeals to me.

Maybe it’s just a sign I am getting older. I find that I am comforted more by the old things that don’t change than I am excited by all the new things that change all the time.

The road in front of the Price homestead has been a dirt road for close to 100 years. Most likely, a hundred years hence it will still be a dirt road.

And the cricket basket of 2111 will look the same as the one that is sitting on the front seat of this old pick-up truck.

And the crickets won’t hop out.

They never do.

They never will.

I like that.

Aug. 18: "She had it comin' ''

Today was just my second day of fall classes and, as you might suspect, it requires a certain amount of adjustment.

Probably one of the biggest adjustments so far has been getting used to my parking situation. When I first enrolled in classes back in January, I managed to get a parking spot in the Commuter West parking lot, which was within easy walking distance of my classes. This semester, however, I procrastinated to the point where, when I applied for a parking decal, the only available spot was in the Coliseum Lot, about a mile-and-a-half from where my classes meet.

Fortunately, MSU has shuttle buses that service far-flung lots such as the Coliseum. So the trick has been figuring out what time I need to be at the stop to catch a bus that will get me to my classes on time.

I’ve been late to two classes, but not because of the bus. Rather, I arrived at my first class on both Wednesday and Thursday only to find out that the class had been moved to another building across campus. Of course, I wasn’t the only student to arrive late and both of my professors understood the situation.

But I have to confess that I boarded the shuttle bus in somewhat of a foul mood on Thursday. My first class on Thursday is College Algebra. I don’t like College Algebra. I don’t understand College Algebra. College Algebra is not my friend; it never has been. Most likely, College Algebra is going to mess up my otherwise pristine GPA.

So I was not happy as I boarded the bus, which was full to the point that only two seats were unoccupied, aisle seats near the back of the bus, opposite one another. On one side, sat a pretty little blonde co-ed. On the other side, was a dude. Can you guess which of the two seats I chose?

“Can I sit here?’’ I asked.

The co-ed didn’t answer. She rolled those big blue eyes of hers and snatched her enormous purse off the empty seat, her reaction being what you might expect had I asked to borrow her tooth-brush.

So I sat down on the other side, next to the dude, who sported a black T-Shirt with the message “I am ashamed of what I did for a Klondyke Bar’’ written across the front.

“How’s it going?’’ I asked, chucking at this T-shirt.

“Not bad,’’ he said. “It would be better if it wasn’t so early.’’

I looked at my watch: It was 9:10 a.m. I guess we have a different definition of “early.’’

As the bus meandered its way across campus, I was able to learn the following about the dude next to me. His name is Kyle. He’s a sophomore from Jackson. He’s majoring in Chemical Engineering. His first class on Thursday is Calculus II. Strangely, the fact that he was starting the day with a math class did not put him in a foul mood at all.

“It’s not hard,’’ he said.

Maybe, I thought, but on the other hand, this guy thinks 9:10 a.m. is “early.’’

Kyle was pleasant enough company, but for some reason I couldn’t quit thinking about the snub I had received from the blonde sitting across the aisle from me.

Normally, I am the kind to take such slights, condescensions and minor acts of rudeness in stride. But I was going to College Algebra, so I wasn’t in a forgiving mood.

I look across the aisle at the blonde and noticed she was wearing a white T-Shirt with the words “Mississippi State Baseball’’ written on it.

A devious idea popped suddenly into my head.

I looked over toward her until she felt the weight of my stare. Tipping my head so that I could gaze over the lens of my sunglasses, arching an eyebrow and using my most leering tone of voice, I asked, “So, sugar, what’s your favorite position?’’

She recoiled in disgust, her blue eyes shooting darts at me.

I let that question hang in the air for a moment, savoring the delicious aroma of co-ed smoke. Then, pointing to her shirt, I said in my most innocent voice, “you know, baseball position? I like shortstop myself.’’

Her face turned a bright, blushing red. As she was struggling to fashion a response, I turned back to Kyle and asked him how many hours he was taking this semester.

She never did answer. As the bus rolled to the final stop five minutes later, she bolted from the bus, her face still a radiating shade of red.

OK. So maybe that was sort of a mean thing to do. But, hey, I was on my way to College Algebra. Besides, if everything about college life can be a learning experience, I like to think I left her with a valuable lesson: Never roll you eyes at an old person unless the person is one of your parents. We may be old, but you DO NOT want to cross us on a day we have College Algebra.

I arrived at my College Algebra class 10 minutes early, learned the class had been switched to another classroom across campus and finally slipped into a seat just as the professor was beginning class.

As she was going over the syllabus, I stared with horror at the blackboard behind her. It was full of all sorts of numbers, letters and odd lines and slashes.

I like to think that I am open-minded, tolerant person. But I will confess I can be close-minded and deeply prejudiced on some subjects. One of those subjects is mixed marriages of numbers and letters. In my view, math classes should content themselves with numbers and leave the alphabet out of it. Same goes for language classes: Stick to the letters, words and phrases and leave the numbers to people like Kyle.

But College Algebra has no sense of propriety. It brazenly throws a letter (usually “X’’ or “Y’’) right up next to a 7 or a 3 without regard to the tender sensibilities of traditionalists like me.

So, as I stared at the blackboard, the numbers and letters seemed to me to form some sort of Hieroglyphic message. After 10 minutes of careful scrutiny, I translated Problem No. 1 thusly: “In the third year of the square root of 7 to the third power, the Great King Xerxes decreed that all males under the age of (X x 3) – (2 x Y squared) would be 13 cubed.’’

To my dismay, this was not quite right.

The professor, having finished reading the syllabus, finally turned to the blackboard. At that point she said something that made my blood run cold:

“OK. These problems are all just really a review of what you have already learned before,’’ she said. “We’ll just go over them quickly just to refresh your memory. You learned all this in high school.’’

High school? I haven't been in high school in 35 years! All I remember learning in high school was that if you stare at Julie Tutor's long, shapely legs long enough, eventually she'll catch on and give you that disppointed look that says, "I would be less ashamed of you if you were a cuter boy.''

Back then, when I was teen-ager, I worked one summer at my cousin’s produce business. One of my co-workers there was a shiftless, lazy, perpetually drunk middle-aged drifter who - having accomplished so very much in life - felt it was his duty to pass along to me the wisdom he had acquired on his way to current lofty condition.

“Always fall behind early,’’ he once told me solemnly. “It gives you more time to catch up.’’

Well, all these years later, I find that I have taken his advice, at least as far as College Algebra is concerned. I was behind before I sat down, it turns out.

Fortunately, nobody rolled their eyes at me on the shuttle ride back to my car.

Good thing.

Aug. 14: "When Cats Fly''

This afternoon, I will return to Starkville after spending my break between the end of summer school and the start of fall classes at my friend’s home in rural Pickens County, Alabama.

It has been a good break. In two weeks, I’ve grown accustomed to sitting on the seat of a tractor and the fields around Joy’s place, all freshly bush-hogged, display my handiwork. I also took out an old fence line, weeded flower beds, trimmed some trees and performed a multitude of other duties during my time here.

In the afternoons, we retired to her front porch and watched the world go by, at least the part of the world that came rumbling down the stretch of dirt road in front of her little cottage, each car or truck trailing a fog of orange Alabama dust in its wake. I told Joy that if I lived here, I believe I’d just buy an orange vehicle and be done with it. A car-wash in this part of the world lasts only until the key hits the ignition.

I have been blissfully unaware of the “news’’ of the world, mainly because the TV hasn’t been on since I arrived. But, of course, the real news – the kind that really has some actual bearing on a person’s life – hardly comes via the airwaves anyway.

So if you were to ask me what the news has been here, I would say that it’s been a quiet couple of weeks. Probably the biggest development during my stay here has been the Redistribution of the Cat Population. I’m guessing this wasn’t covered on Fox News or CNN, so this is probably the first you have heard about it.

This is probably not big news to most folks, I realize, but it’s a major development for Elsie Price, who I am sure is happy to be rid of the Flying Cat population at her house.

I realize that this all warrants some explanation.

When Joy relocated from Jackson to the family property here in Alabama, she brought with her a couple of house cats – Bella and Lacey. At first, Joy and the cats moved in with Elsie, Joy’s mom. Each day, Joy would get up and go a few hundred yards down the dirt road to make ready her little cottage, which was once occupied by her aunt. She worked all day at the cottage, returning to her mom’s home in the evenings.

Bella and Lacey are sisters from the same litter, Joy says. I suspect it would be more accurate to call them half-sisters. Bella is jet black with just a spot of white fur on her chest and belly. Lacey is a Siamese of some sort, white with a blend of beige, tan and brown with four white feet that Joy calls “her snowshoes.’’ The striking difference in their appearance suggests different fathers.

Joy says that a female cat can be impregnated by multiple males and deliver the babies in the same litter, you know, sorta like what happens on “Jersey Shore’’ every week.

Anyway, Bella and Lacey settled in at her mom’s house. Because Joy is an independent contractor – a project engineer who specializes in nuclear power – and often is away on business for a month or two at a time, it made sense that Bella and Lacey would make her mom’s house their permanent residence.

But a couple of developments began to complicate matters.

First, Joy’s mom already has two cats – Tiger and Bama. They are strictly outdoor cats and presented no problem at first. But soon, Lacey and Bella began to notice that, although outdoor living lacked certain conveniences – upholstered furniture and air-conditioning to name two – Bama and Tiger seemed to have a pretty interesting life. Ultimately, Lacy and Bella were able to convince Joy’s mom to let them go outside from time to time. But as the weeks went by, the two cats began to like it so much that it was difficult to get them back in the house. Ultimately, nothing short of a thunderstorm could induce them to come inside.

This soon became a cause of concern. Unlike Tiger and Bama, who grew up as outdoor cats, Bella and Lacey are city cats who had always lived indoors. As a result, the fear was that Lacey and Bella lacked the necessary survival skills to live in a place that is populated by coyotes, foxes and snakes. Bama and Tiger knew how to avoid such predators, but Lacey and Bella were innocents, and it seemed only a matter of time before curiosity might indeed kill the cats.

So the decision was made to capture Bella and Lacey and return them, on a permanent basis, to the status of indoor cats. Of course, nobody asked Bella and Lacey if this was their preference. Suffice to say, they did not accept the transition gracefully.

First, they were forever waiting by the door, ready for any chance to bolt outside. That strategy produced only very limited success, however.

So Lacey and Bella came up with a different tactic. They decided they would pretend to be deathly afraid of the carpet.

This is how Bella and Lacey became that rare breed of animal known as Flying Cat. At her mom’s house, their feet never hit the floor. Rather, they leap from one piece of furniture to the next, like a man might jump from one river rock to another to get to the other shore. Did you ever see the map in those magazines that are stuffed into the seatback pocket of an airplane that show all of the places the airline services? I suspect Bella and Lacey have created a similar mental map of the house: “Cat Flight 104 from Recliner to Coffee Table is now ready for departure.’’

The house is clean, nicely furnished, comfortable. But even the coziest of ambiences is altered when the air is thick with cats.

Unlike me, Joy and her mom are convinced that the cats’ sudden and almost pathological fear of the carpet is grounded in truth rather than conspiracy. Fleas, they say. Their theory is that Bella and Lacey picked up fleas from outside and brought them into the house, where the vermin had nested in the carpet. Joy went online and read that cats will avoid any area which they know is inhabited by fleas. So, the thinking goes, there must be fleas in the carpet.

It’s a reasonable idea, of course. But the theory breaks down a bit when you consider the measures taken to address the problem and how ineffective those solutions have been. The carpets have been treated not once, but twice, with flea-killer. The carpets have been shampooed. Both cats have been given flea-preventative medications. And yet, the cats still avoid the carpet like a debutante avoids a Wal-Mart.

It is for that reason that I believe this fear of the carpet is a recent fabrication. If dogs rarely think, cats think entirely too much, if you ask me. They seem to me to always be carefully calculating their next move.

A few days ago, Joy decided to move the cats out of her mom’s house and into her little cottage. I am happy to report that Lacey and Bella have ceased their flying. I think maybe they realized that the strategy wasn’t working. At any rate, they walk around Joy’s house, showing no aversion to her rugs.

But somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the cats’ plots to return to outdoor living. Rather, I think they are formulating a new strategy. Heaven only knows what it might be. I mean, if they’ll concoct a Flying Cat strategy, there is no limit to the extremes to which they are willing to go.

For now, though, they have offered no clue. I am watching them carefully, however. They are up to something, I am sure.

Aug. 12: "Escape to Alabama''

I’ve been spending the two weeks between the end of summer school and the beginning of fall classes at my friend’s house in Carrollton, Ala., which is about a pig squeal over the Alabama-Mississippi line.

Actually, Joy’s place is not in Carrollton at all, but about 12 miles outside of town. She has been living here on her family’s property for about a year now after leaving her job in Jackson to become an independent contractor. Joy lives in a cozy little cottage that once belonged to her aunt. The cottage is one of three houses on the family’s 160-acre plot of land that has been in her family for close to 100 years.

Of the 160 acres, about half of it has been cleared, mainly because her maternal grandparents once farmed the land. But it has been probably 50 years since the last crop was put in, so – aside from a 10-acre pasture that his home to a couple of fat and happy mares – most of the cleared land exists only to be bush-hogged. About the time you have finished bush-hogging everything, it’s time to start all over.

So the past two weeks have been productive. Joy, who is as comfortable on the seat of a tractor as she is on the floor of a nuclear power plant, took over the bush-hogging duties, which left me to do other things.

One day I took out an old fence line, using a shovel and a sledge-hammer to remove about 30 posts that has been sunk about half-way to China. It was hard, hot exhausting work, but when I had managed to get the last post out of the ground, I looked upon my work with great satisfaction. I’ve heard about 10 comments about how great it looks, mostly the sound of my own voice. But it was a job well done, even if the reaction of others has been a bit subdued.

We’ve been busy doing odd jobs every day. We’ve weeded her mom’s flower beds, repaired a broken weed-eater, sanded her front porch, which will be painted if it ever decides not to rain every day as it has for the past four or five days.

At about 5 in the afternoon each day, drenched in sweat and grime, we stagger up on the front porch and sip from long glasses that, because of condensation, are soon as wet on the outside as they are on the inside. We talk a little between long silences as we absently watch the little corner of her world.

The property is located along a dirt road of about eight miles that connects one narrow stretch of black-top road to another. Because it is neither a major road nor a shortcut to anywhere, the people who come down the road trailing a cloud of red Alabama dust are few and familiar. Joy’s little cottage sits about 30 yards back from the little road. From her porch, we can survey about a four-hundred yard section of the road, from her mom’s house, which sits high on a hill in one direction, to another hill distinguished by two giant oaks, where her grandparents’ house used to be.

Because the traffic is limited to those who live along this dirt road and Joy grew up here, she knows every vehicle that comes into view. She not only knows their names, but where they have been and where they are going.

“There’s (so-and-so),’’ she notes as a truck approaches at one end of the road. “He’s going to see his mama.’’

“There’s (whoever),’’ she says. “He’s just got off work. He works for the county and lives in the house next to where that old trailer used to be.’’

Things like that.

About 3 every afternoon, a little red car comes scooting down the road.

“That’s Mr. O,’’ Joy says. “He’s going to (so-and-so’s) house to have a beer. You watch. He’ll be back through here in about an hour. Then, in about another hour (so-and-so) will come down the road to Mr. O’s to have a beer at his place. They’ve been doing this every day for as long as I can remember.’’

Every car or truck that passes slows in front of Joy’s little house to wave. We wave back. My presence here is bound to be the hot topic up and down this dirt road, Joy says, laughing.

On weekend mornings, Hugh appears at one end of the road riding his big tractor and pulling his heavy-duty bush-hog. Hugh is a man in his mid-50s who never married and doesn’t smoke or drink. He seems to spend almost all of his weekends on that big tractor. Hugh bush-hogs the banks of the road and the steep hills, ditches and rough ground that the people who live along the road have neither the equipment nor the nerve to tackle. As far as anyone knows, he isn’t paid to do it. It’s just something he does.

But the traffic is pretty light. Most of the time, we just watch the birds that frequent either at the bird-feeder in her yard.

Because I am an early riser, I’ve spent the early-morning hours sitting on the porch drinking my coffee and reflecting on my life’s journey – where it has lead, where it might yet lead. At that hour, I have the company of a pair of cardinals, mates who come to have breakfast at the bird-feeder. They will swoop down to eat the bird-seed and they fly off across the road, disappearing into the kudzu canopy, only to repeat the circuit several times over the next hour or so. Nobody stays at home to eat anymore, I guess.

The other afternoon, Joy and I noticed a group of about six cardinals gathering at the bird-feeder, all females. I speculated that the girls had left the kids at home with their dads to have a Girls Night Out and, in the Southern tradition, decided to go to the buffet. I wondered what the topic of conversation would be among them as they flitted and chirped and chatted around the bird feeder. They don’t watch “The Bachelorette’’ or “American Idol,’’ I’m guessing, so I have no idea what they might have to talk about.

The birds are not the only animals who call the area home, of course. One day just after dark, I noted the vague shape of an armadillo waddling through the yard while Joy was in the house making supper.

Joy was irritated by this development. “Damn armadillo,’’ she said. “I woulda shot it if I had seen it.’’

Why? Well, for some reason this armadillo – despite hundreds of acres of perfectly suitable locations - has chosen to dig his holes next to Joy’s propane tank.

There are bigger animals that live along this dirt road, too.

The road is dotted with deer stands, and for good reason. The woods along the road are teeming with deer. I’ve only seen one buck so far and a small one at that. But it seems like every time you drive down the road, you spot a doe.

It seems to me that the main diversion of the doe that live here is to stand in the middle of the road and wait until a car approaches, and then jump back into the underbrush. It must be terribly boring to be a doe in this part of the world, I reckon.

I suppose to some people, life for the human animals our here in the country is sorta boring, too.

It suits me just fine, though. Somehow, it’s soothing to be out here, getting dirty and sweaty and then spending the afternoons and evenings on the front porch.

I haven’t watched more than 10 minutes of TV since I’ve been here and that’s a wonderful thing. Out here on the front porch, you watch the world and get to make up stories about what you see. It’s not that way when you are sitting in front of a TV: Somebody else gets to make up the stories and you just have to sit there and take it.

I like this way much better.

In a little more than a week, I have found that there are any number of stories that I am itching to tell, including the story of Skylar the Jealous Terrier, The Great Cat Migration and Homecoming Day at the Crossroads Baptist Church to name just a few.

But for now, I’m going to keep those stories percolating in my mind. Its 10 a.m. and time to get busy.