I think I did really well on my bio test! Yipeeeeee!!!! What. A. Relief. One down, at least 10,000 more to go.

I just remembered something I learned in class today.

On average each person has slightly over three (let’s just call it three) recessive alleles that would have killed you if the genotype was homozygous instead of heterozygous.

Meaning that each person’s parents gave them at least 3 genes that would have killed them if they had gotten that same gene from the other parent as well. How exciting. But because we have gene alternatives that come from each parent, the dominant gene that comes from the good parent protects us from the killer recessive gene that comes from the evil parent.

Which means that if you’re alive and healthy, you dodged a killer bullet three times .  And we all play Russian roulette with our offspring when we decide who to knock up or get knocked up by. You and your partner are the gun, and you and your sinful trigger finger are aiming that semi-bullet-filled chamber at YOUR OWN CHILDREN!!!

Remember, abstinence is the answer.

1. Today, at the coffee office, one of my least favorite homeless men (He’s very aggressive in underground parking lots), started rapping on the window and yelling, “TOMORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY.” 

2. Do you ever site at a coffee house for like 4 hours. And you’re next to a the same person the whole time. Like you’re studying Chemistry, they’re studying Accounting. You don’t speak one word to each other for the entirety of the stay, but when you leave, you feel obligated to say goodbye.  As if otherwise they’d be all, “How rude.  That bitch didn’t even end this relationship properly.” And when you DO say goodbye, they smile and wave goodbye as well, cause that’s what was expected of you in a weird way. Just being close in proximity to someone for an extended amount of time is enough to form a bond that must be formally broken.

3. I’ve been without caffeine now for about 2  months, ordering decaf every time I go into a coffee house. But I got a caffeinated beverage the other day by accident, and was quickly reminded how I did so well in undergrad. Caffeine has a way of turning my brain light way, way up. It laser focuses my concentration levels and puts my ability to memorize and recall information on steroids.  It’s absurd how much better I can think on that drug.  I always used to down a couple espresso shots right before each test.

So even though I spent a good two months OFF the drug, I’m now, against my better judgment, trying to wean myself slowly back ON to caffeine.  It’s for my future, because I cannot afford to not do well (translated: I have to do well).

I’m at a Peet’s Coffee studying for my Biology Midterm on Wednesday. In order to connect to their wireless, I have to get a 4 digit code from the barista. I asked for my network code yesterday, and they handed me a stunning ticket that said XYXX which was more than enough momentum to push me into my study of evolution.  Today I got a code that said D4BR, and spent a solid minute trying to come up with a relevant scientific explanation.  Too bad there isn’t an element called Darmium. Cause then I would have had Tetradarmium Monobromide. Yeah, that could never exist. Cause Bromide has a –1 charge, and that couldn’t balance out with 4 of anything.  And that’s Chemistry anyway, so how’s that supposed to help me on my Biology midterm?

Ok, back to studying.

In addition to doing well in class and on the MCATs, I should be volunteering, researching, and doing clinic work.  In order to start volunteer clinic work (whatever that may entail), many places require CPR certification. Which I spent all last Sunday getting at the Red Cross Center in Burbank.  It enjoyed it. But it always shocks me to see how far removed actual medical care is from what I’m learning in school. The skills required to keep someone alive through chest compressions (cool head, stamina, ability to count to 30) are so different from the knowledge I’m learning in the classroom (evolution, chemical reactions).  Of course these separate bits of knowledge are related, but not really in an immediate practical way.

It’s like asking me what I did for a living, and I say “computers.” Maybe that used to be all the same thing, but now that means VASTLY different things.  5 people could work in computers and have knowledge bases that barely overlap with each other. I could work with search engine algorithms while my friend could work in front-end web design, a third could work in hardware networking. We would barely speak each other’s languages.  And knowing about optimizing SQL queries won’t make me better at hooking up my sound system. But from experience, many people think that working under the technology umbrella means we all know the same things even though many of the subset fields are only tangentially related.  And knowing about every technology would hardly be productive for any one field within technology.

There must be a more efficient way to get from lay-person to hernia repair expert and maybe that route doesn't involve learning about combustion reactions.  The super high investment cost of becoming health care personnel is prohibitive.  And much of the science learned in pre-med and medical school is irrelevant once a medical specialty is chosen. Can’t we stop pretending that we have to know ALL science in order to be good at some science. I don’t need physics to diagnose a urinary tract infection just like I don’t need to know about ecommerce shopping carts in order to do a mainframe upgrade.

On Wednesday, I wake up to a text from my roommate that tells me that someone broke into my car.  She says “They smashed in your side window, there must have been something they saw that they wanted.” I’m mystified. I don’t keep anything valuable in my car since last January someone broke in and took my $300 dollar Brand New Garmin GPS. I sigh and walk slowly outside to find my driver’s side rear window smashed in and my trunk open. I peer in and my gym bag is gone. My gym bag! Nothing else. There was nothing else to take! So they got some sweaty clothes and my rock climbing shoes, harness, and chalk.  And this is such bad timing, because I just renewed by rock climbing gym membership THAT Monday! I’m really trying to get momentum back in the climbing world.

It’s such a waste. They won’t be able to get more than $20-40 for the gear, but getting that window replaced, plus buying more shoes is worth 10 times that much. I wish they’d have knocked on my door, so I could have handed them a 20 dollar bill. 

A day later I realize that I can’t find my other set of keys, I had a suspicion that I had left my keys in the car in my gym bag. I lost a good night’s worth of sleep over it.  Worrying that I was going to wake up to find my car gone.  My car is still there.  I figure (hope) stealing a car takes a different criminal than one who snatches and grabs purses.  But I DID have the locks on my apartment switched. Just in case.

I constantly have to defend the area I live in to other people.  I really like this area!! Great shopping, nice young city crowd. But this is the 4th time someone in our 7 unit apartment complex has had their car broken into since January.

Bio Lab is turning out to be one of my favorite things about school. I have not one partner, but 4.  Two freshman girls and two freshman guys. We all sit at a large table. And we are by far the liveliest group.

Last week’s lab was to demonstrate the Hardy-Weinberg Principle which is used to show if alleles are changing within a population.  In this demonstration we had 10 Large Red Beads, 10 Large Pink Beads, and 10 Large White Beads.  Representing 30 red Alleles and 30 White alleles.

We then dumped all the big beads into a container with lots of small white beads. We then had 30 seconds to go hunting with tweezers to get out as many large beads as we could.  My side of the table raced the other side.   We were imitating predators essentially, and the large white beads against the white small bead background were essentially camouflaged. 

After the first round of hunting, we would put the population of beads up to 50 proportionally based on the percentage left in the population after the initial massacre.  We went hunting and then re-grew the population 4 times.

The whole lab process turned into one giant metaphor for hunting.  Whoever won was “just that much hungrier,” and  that “white meat taste just the same as red meat.” If we accidentally tweezed out a small white bead, we had “strayed into omnivore territory having eaten some shrubbery.”

At the end of the 4 rounds of enthusiastic hunting, I announced to my table after calculating some quick Hardy-Weinberg math that “Our red beads have succumbed to extinction.” My lab partner Stacy quickly confirmed my results on paper.

We had ended up with 0 red beads 24 pink beads and 19 white beads.  Our red population had gone from 10 => 10 => 9 =>7 =>0. Our white population had gone from 10 => 9 =>15 =>15 =>19. It all makes sense. Alleles from less camouflaged populations are less likely to make it into successive generations and vice versa.

Kevin from across the table pipes up, “Then why are there red beads in the bucket if your red beads are extinct?”  And me and my hunting partner are all, “What!!…Ah, man, we must have had twins  a couple times while we were reproducing.” Meaning, “Shit, we accidently added back in too many beads while regrowing our population.” My partner Stacy shrugs, picks the red beads out of the container and says, “Nooooow they’re extinct.”

In lab, also emphasized was directional selection, stabilizing selection, and disruptive selection. One of the questions on the lab was “In humans, birth weight is an example of a characteristic affected by stabilizing selection. What does this mean to the long-term birth weight of human babies? How might the increasing number of caesarean sections be affecting this characteristic?”

Stabilizing selection means that outliers on both ends of the population are selected against.  So both high and low weight babies are less likely to survive than average weight babies.

The answer ends up being something like “The birth weight would be normalized, and the normal curve would stretch out due to caesarian sections.” Meaning both higher weight and lower weight babies are now more likely to survive due to caesarians.   Stabilizing selection still occurs but at a wider normal distribution than before.

During discussion of this at the table, my lab partner Johnny pipes up that he would really not like to have to have a caesarean, cause that seems way more painful. Discussion ensues.  Me saying that, “Either way, you shouldn’t get to stressed about it.” Megan pipes up that her mom has had 3 caesareans. I don’t mention that mine did 8 vaginally (that tends to derail conversations).  Then Kevin pipes up that “he would rather be cut open than have his pelvis broken.” And the table goes silent for a beat.  “Pelvis broken?” we all ask.

“Yeah, if you give birth vaginally, your pelvis breaks.”

The four of us at the table are all, ‘Nooooooo….”

“No, it does.” You can tell Kevin is being serious. He’s not one of those be-stupid-just-to-be-funny type of guys. He really thinks this.  Just like my friend from work who thought that “All the genes come from the dad.”

“Kevin, that’s not possible. Women dilate, but that has nothing to do with the pelvis.  And then they aren’t in a lot of pain after a vaginal birth, that wouldn’t be the case with a broken pelvis.”

Kevin is looking more and more confused after 5 minutes of vigorous discussion. He calls the lab instructor over siting “The need for an expert opinion.” He asks her, “How much medical knowledge do you have.” She giggles and says “not much.” Kevin plows on regardless. “Ok, when a woman gives birth, does her pelvis break?”

She looks a little shocked. “Noooo, that would take a Really long time to recover.”

I’m studying hard for my first Chemistry test on Thursday.  I have to work extra hard to catch up with all the little smarties fresh out of high school AP Chemistry at their respective prep schools. AP Chemistry is what many high schoolers like my little sister take. AP courses are equivalent to college courses. So most universities will accept AP Chemistry credit so that the students don’t have to take Chemistry in college. Except, med schools don’t accept AP chemistry, so most of the pre-med students in my classes have already taken AP chemistry and are now retaking essentially the same course. And these people are my competition.

I did not take AP Chemistry.

Let me tell you about my high school Chemistry experience at Hartford Christian Academy some 9 years ago. My 6 classmates and I  were warehoused in front of a small television, INSTEAD OF A TEACHER, each class period watching a man teaching Chemistry. This man was broadcasting live 900 miles away via Bob Jones University’s abortion of a teaching system they call BJ LINC.  The chemistry teacher would spend the first 10 minutes of every 50 minute class praying and recapping chapel sermons. Chemistry class was always part-devotional period. But that wasn’t exactly unique to this class in my school.

The 7 of us were “proctored” by the dying janitor as we sat around the class ignoring the TV and goofing off while he pretended to not know what was happening as that was his illusion of control. Tests and homework were barely noticeable milestones. We just shared answers hurriedly so we could get back to doing nothing.

I learned NOTHING in high school Chemistry. And it’s truly symbolic of the rampant propaganda within the AACS (American Association of Christian Schools). The teachers at schools belonging to this association never stop talking about the quality of education you can receive at these church schools. The teachers would constantly be telling us to be happy that we were at Hartford Christian Academy because you couldn’t imagine how bad the education was at Public Schools dear Lord.  It’s complete BULLSHIT. At my school the man with the Bible degree from Bob Jones University taught us math when he wasn’t busy flirting with 15 year olds. Another science teacher/math teacher was a recent Pensecola Christian College grad, who had failed to get a job as an RN. The Chemistry/Math proctor was the school’s janitor.  The school clearly had a policy of taking those in the church, who were otherwise struggling with employment, and said, “Well, maybe we  should install these fine Christians in our church school to instruct the children of our parishioners.”  My high school geometry teacher skipped the chapter on proofs because she. did. not. understand. them.   Hartford Christian Academy, is THAT what you call superior education?

Maybe for destination pastor wife or destination military kids, HCA’s education would suffice, but for those of us who want to be scientists or pursue higher learning in a non-Christian institution, we were intellectually abused.  My peers were in public school taking AP Chemistry and AP Calculus. I was preached at during basic Chemistry and told that proofs were too hard.

Another piece of cold fact that further illustrates the abysmal education at AACS Schools (most of whom use Bob Jones University’s or Pensacola Christian College's textbooks) is the ruling that upheld the right of the University of California to deem incoming students from high schools that teach history, government, and science from these textbooks, inadequately instructed. The UC system may deny matriculation or require additional coursework for applicants coming from a high school which teaches from these text books. The ruling basically says, “[Universities have the right to set admissions standards, and if you want to get into that University than it’s up to YOU to meet those standards. And if you’re religion doesn't like it than too bad.]” See here for some analysis of the lawsuit.

Guess which high school taught from these text books?  Hartford Christian Academy. Guess which high school sat us in front of a TV and told us we were getting a good education? Hartford Christian Academy. Guess who would have been denied enrollment had I applied to UCLA or UC Berkley. ME.
I currently am enrolled at the University of Southern California. NOT a UC school. But in my interview, USC was very trepaditious about accepting me given my high school background in science. They advised me to take pre-chemistry courses before the start of the first semester.
But of course, these high school administrators don’t care about the students getting denied from UC Berkley. You would have received counseling from the principal if you decided not to attend Christian Fundamentalist higher-education where they debate such things as the correct version of the gospel instead of reasons why AIDS viruses are developing medication resistant strains . (Evolution Oh. No. You Did NOT.)

God-fearing students would want to go to Bob Jones University or Pensacola Christian University. So the problem of the BJU curriculum being instructionally inadequate is moot. The Christian school lords have behaved correctly in “God’s eyes”. Done and done.  Nice for them, but it ends up creating victims, who are now woefully behind their peers in knowledge and opportunity, before they even get a shot at making decisions for themselves.

I’m angry and I’m bitter.  And I want to shake my first-year freshman Facebook friends all skipping along the pre-determined path after high school to enroll in Bob Jones University or Pensecola Christian College, where they will receive Non-regionally accredited degrees. I want to urge them to reconsider for the sake of their future selves. If they wish to continue their education after attending these institutions, they can take out Vegas odds on their changes of getting accepted into grad school or obtaining a legitimate professional certification. Droves of students have had their lives screeched to a halt because of the misrepresentation of the schools’ legitimacy during the enrollment and education processes.

I spent 9 months trying to convince a 3rd tier University (University of Nevada, Reno) that my credits from Bob Jones University were worth something after I had been expelled from there. I had to beg them to let me transfer without losing 2 years of my life.  But I still think getting expelled from BJU was the best thing that ever happened to me because I don’t want to imagine what I would have been unable to achieve had they been my alma mater.

Before the last USC football game, I asked my friend who was explaining football to me, “How many feet are in a down?” And she sighed, and said, “Maybe, we should take a step back here.”  Turns out a down is synonymous with an attempt.  So you have 4 attempts to go each 10 yards OR 4 downs to go each 10 yards.  And then she starts explaining what a goal post is. That thing at the end of each side of the football field that is metal and tall. (Hardi Har Har)

This is what I feel like in Chemistry, though. I have a LOT to learn, and I have to learn the building blocks of the game. My peers fresh out of high school already know this stuff. Hartford Christian Academy bludgeoned my appreciation for science almost out of existence.  I have recovered from that. But I still need to work twice as hard as my peers in order to get the same initial grades.
I have to study more.  This discrepancy in knowledge between my abysmal education and my AP Chem educated piers will hopefully only last for one semester. Then the playing field will be leveled, and I will truly be a peer in both knowledge as well as ability. No thanks to all you Christians.

I’ve been working in “Corporate America” for the last three years.  And there are a lot of comparisons to be made between working and school.  The people are hotter, the assignments and deadlines are more predictable, and you get to grow salmonella in a Petri dish instead of attend status meetings. 

One of the major differences that keeps striking me as strange is that classes are SO SHORT. Each class is a standard 50 minutes long. Which is what they’ve always been since the beginning of my education.  But for some reason they SEEM a lot shorter than ever before.  This might be because 2 50 minute classes with a nice 10 minute break in between is nothing compared to 8 hours banging away at your desk at the same Application Requirements Document or 8 hours creating a batch process to bring data from one place to a whole nother place ( So. Damn. Exciting). 

So it’s a piece of cake sitting for 2 hours in class listening to teachers explain topics they are obsessed with. And when people start packing up their bags a minute before class ends, I’m always jolted. Going, “Oh! It’s time to move along. Ooooooo, now I get to go to Ground Zero Coffee Shop and sit in a dimly lit room studying while I drink a one dollar Americano.”

I’ve been in school 2 weeks now, and the yucky and familiar school dream started about a week ago with a renewed vengeance. That hardly took very long.  I used to have the same exact dream all throughout my undergrad.  So I’ve been here before.

The scene of the dream changes every time, but the topic of the dream never does.  The dream is exactly like this => I’m 3 weeks into the semester and realize I had signed up for a class that I had forgotten I’d signed up for. So I haven't been going to that class. It’s one week past the time I can drop the class. So I’ve been getting ZERO marks for 3 weeks, and am unable to drop the class and unable to in any way recover my grade enough to pass. The teacher won’t reason with me, and my friends are all doing phenomenal in that class.

It’s always that scenario. Not ever a  dream where I forget to study for a test or come to school naked. It’s always that I added a class, then forgot about it completely.  I spend the rest of the dream freaking out and running through myriads of scenarios to try to improve my situation.  And I never can. Now I have the overwhelming understanding that I now have to work non-stop to catch up my knowledge in that class that is now far behind that of my classmates only to be given the slightest chance of a passing grade.  And I probably won’t be able to do it. And then all my studying for other classes, and all the risks I’ve taken are worth NOTHING. Cause If I fail one class, my GPA is destroyed and my life in essence amounts to just one big waste of time.

It sucks, cause I wake up stressed out.

The same dream still happened infrequently during these past 3 years while I’ve been working at my Consulting job, but I was always able to tell my dreaming self, that clearly this was not happening, that I’m not in school, so It’s ok. But now, I’m just screwed, cause the distinction between my dream life and my real life is much more similar now since we’re both in school, and I can’t tell that the dream isn’t real until I wake up.

How can my own brain keep getting tricked by itself? I’ve been aware of this dream for YEARS now. And I can have this dream multiple times in a week. But every time I have the dream, it’s just as real and just as scary as the time before. And it makes me feel so powerless that I can’t stop it from happening. That I can’t stop myself from beating myself up. It’s like I have this hand just whacking at my head and no matter how hard I try to sit on that hand or hold it to my side, it just finds it’s way back to whacking my head.

I have had my very first ever college labs. These labs, like the lecture classes, are integrated with undergrads. So all us grad students are mixed in with the kiddies. Lectures aren’t so bad cause people just sit there, but in lab I have to interact with Freshmen. And they do little freshmen things like laugh at how Rubber Pipette Bulbs look like sticky mini-condoms. (Ok, FINE, maybe that was me, but my adorable 19-yr old lab partner agreed with me, and he laughed).

There are actually 3 other post-bacc pre-med majors in my Chem lab, but I didn’t see them until it was too late, and seating is permanent from where you sit on the first day. You sit in that stool, and your destiny for the semester is set in stone.

So Chemistry lab started out with our teacher, Adam, telling us the safety procedures.  According to what was said in lecture, a major accident occurs every 10 years, and a minor (more like medium) accident occurs every 3 years.  They say it happens that often, so you can’t be negligent of safely procedures or you could end up hurting yourself or your lab partner.  Adam had had a minor accident during his second semester of lab instruction when a student was dropping acid from a squeeze bottle. The nozzle of the squeeze bottle was clogged, so the student squeezed harder. and harder. And the bottle of acid exploded and covered his face in acid. He immediately was rushed to the eye-wash station, a contraption that shoots water into your face, and was held there for enough time for them to be sure he would be ok.  He ended up being fine, but while everyone was paying attention to the guy who exploded the bottle, no one had noticed that his lab partner’s shirt was eaten through and that the skin on his back was starting to blister and burn. The lab partner was rushed to the shower, and was rinsed off (while embarrassed) in front of the whole class, but ended up being fine, with only minor burns.  -- This was a no-fault incident that was actually handled pretty well in retrospect.  The kid was also wearing his protective eye gear, or else he could have lost his eyes.  eek.

USC labs are also under a LOT of scrutiny because of one of those major incidents 3 years ago at UCLA when a grad student died after being roasted alive by her own sweater. She was using extremely flammable chemicals and was NOT wearing a rubber lab coat.   Because of incidents like this, USC won’t even let you enter the lab unless you are wearing a rubber lab coat and protective goggles.

So the Chem lab we did was just us inventorying our drawers to make sure we had all the requisite lab equipment that we will be responsible for till the end of the semester.   We had to pull beakers, and test tubes, and wire mesh out of our drawers and count it all. If we were missing stuff, we were sent down to the supply room to get stuff for our drawers.

While pulling items out of my drawer, something slid out of a flimsy tube and crashed to the floor.  I spun around and noticed a thermometer was shattered. And I thought to myself, “Shit.” And then I thought to myself, “Good thing they don’t use mercury thermometers anymore.” I raised my hand and Adam came over, smiled, and sighed. He went and grabbed a large beaker and some gloves and started collecting some of the larger shards of glass. Then he said to me , “We need to start looking for those balls of Mercury.” O.o

And in my head I was all, “OOOOHHH NOOOOOOOO, I’ve become a cliche on my very first day, my very first 10 minutes of LAB!!!!!!”

And we started looking around and we see all these silver balls rolling around everywhere. He poured powder all over the balls while telling me that I was actually helping his case out cause he’d had the following conversation the other day.

Adam: “I think we should use all the alcohol thermometers, since the mercury thermometers aren’t safe”

Adam’s Boss: “Well, we have mercury thermometers too, so that’s what we’ll use.”

Adam: “What if they break.”

Adam’s Boss: “Nobody is going to break a thermometer.”

So Adam told me that I was making his case for him. He also started telling me stories about mercury, how scientists used to take large buckets and dip their hands in it and just handle that stuff like it was no big deal, and like it didn’t cause itchy skin and loss of  hair, teeth, nails, and coordination.

I in turn told him that modern archeologists are able to track Louis and Clark across the Louisiana Territory by the mercury deposits they left behind in their campsite latrines.  A long-term bread crumb trail for historians.  Louis and Clark had started their journey with 600 of Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills, mercury laxatives, meant to be used if they felt badly after consuming bad water or food. They did use them, and we love them for it.

Adam sent me to the supply room to get a mercury thermometer to replace the one I had broken. The supply room attendant handed me a thermometer and said, “Be careful not to drop this, there’s mercury in there.” I pretended to act surprised and said, “Woah Ok, I’ll be careful.”

Adam was a great sport about everything. Even with a bad start, I feel like Chem lab is going to go pretty well this semester. Just a feeling.

My bio lab was pretty boring comparatively, we just measured water in a bunch of different ways. And there are no other post-baccs in that lab, which makes me vewy, vewy sad.

I like to switch up my environments when I study. I study in segmented periods of time so that I can easily compartmentalize both the environment and the knowledge together.  This way, when I’m asked to recall information I can recreate the environment under which the information was stored in my head, and for some reason this facilitates my recall.  For instance, If my chemistry teacher asks me about how to do a problem with the Law of Multiple Proportions, I’ll envision myself sitting at the table by the window in the Studio City Starbucks. I’ll remember the lady across from me with the skinny jeans with buttons around her ankle and that will of course trigger memories about  ratios with small whole numbers.

The important part is to never study in the same place too many times, otherwise the memories get confused.  I can’t study Chapter 1 AND 2 in the same location. That’s too much information for my brain packets.  My brain packets are medium-sized and they like to be filed away nicely without getting too crowded. This doesn't mean I have to go constantly to different study places, but it DOES mean I have to switch tables for every study trip.

While I’m off at my coffee and study trips I overhear some of the strangest conversations and have some of my own.  I’ve heard a man sobbing to his therapist as he hates himself if he has money, so that’s why he’s avoided getting promotions and finding employment. I’ve heard MBA students going through case studies. And I hear the regular loud arguing of entertainment industry people at Aroma Cafe on weekday nights, yelling about stuff that doesn’t matter. “Beauty and the Beast was WAAAAY better than Princess and the Frog. The voiceovers alone…” They interrupt their furious script writing/reviewing/memorizing to geekily banter back and forth with each other.

The other day I was in Aroma, enjoying the man yelling across the room at an older lady that he just needed that $600,000 for the indie film he was trying to get produced. Another complete stranger piped in that he hadn’t known you could even MAKE a movie for 600 grand these days.  Discussion ensues.  Then a younger lady joins the conversation and inquires of one of the older gentleman how he got into the industry. He responded that he moved to LA when he was 30 and started writing scripts for cartoons. And the younger lady says, “And what are you now, 35?” And she smiles. And she was Clearly doing that thing where she was fake exaggerated “flirting” with the older guy. And the next line in the normal screenplay of life is where he should go , “hahahaha, awe, thanks hun.” while gently rolling his eyes in humor. But NOOO. This 65 year old guy accepts the comment at face value and goes into a monologue about how he maintains his youthfulness.  “No carbs, Protein, Protein, Protein, As little sugar as you can stand, and two packs of beef jerky every day.” Which is clearly the recipe to how to lose your mind enough to think that you look 35 when you actually look exactly the age you told us you were.

And speaking of age. I was at the studio city Starbucks and ordered my hot decaf two-pump carmel latte with whip for Ginger. And the barista in surprise goes, “Oh!, I’ve never met a Ginger.”

And I say my rote, “Yea, everybody’s heard the name, but no one ever HAS that name.”

And she says, “Yeah, it’s from that cartoon.”

And I’ m like , “What cartoon?” And she goes “that one on Nickelodeon.”

And I say, “Oh, never heard of it, most people think of Gilligan’s Island.”

To which she giggly replies, “Oh, never heard of it, but I’m only 22, so I haven't seen many

older shows.”

And I said in kind of a taken aback tone, “Well, I  just barely turned 26. They used to play it on Nick at Nite”

And then she smiles and says, “I guessed we missed each other by 30 seconds in the generational gap.”

And my face went… O.o

And I’m thinking, “GENERATIONAL GAP!!!!! Bitch, we went to high school at the same time.”  It’s not like I had difficulty learning the iPhone, or that I ‘d want to put a personal ad in the local paper to get a date (WDF n/s 5’4” 120 ISO M 5/8”+ for LTR),  or that I’d wear my Sunday best to fly an airplane. GENERATIONAL GAP!!!!

I wanted to hurl my coffee in her face, but I had to wait for it to be made first.