Thank you Jackie (and yes, of course I am Helen–with the face to sink a thousand ship! Ah such power!)
You demonstrate such grace, and guess what I should have said, (more or less quoting from the coal miners daughter– I (and many others) are sometime ignorant, but not stupid!
unless you've run across perquisite, which is so rarely written or even said, and so often just "perks" you might not know the word– it does look like 'prerequisites' so it is a mistake an ignorant person can make. But we are all ignorant of some things! Not to be pendantic, but be pendantic!
I follow Mark Twain's advice– I read a lot, and try to hang about smarter (than me!) people!–(you guys!) I read every post! And before I ever posted any thing, I read almost every thread on main page.. I haven't yet read all the old pages
WOW, you ask how could it not be obvious? But that "jeeves" was funny was not at all obvious to me.. I thought the books dull– always going on about ripping good times, and cocktail parties (poor me, I have never been to a cocktail party!– I've been to cocktail hours before dinner, but a small party for drinks, before the theater? What! The hour before the theater was spent on the subway getting to the theater!)
I also hated "Little Women" when I first read it as a child– Jo carrying on about how poor they were: they had a house, she had her own room! and books! The family had cook! And piano lessons, and art lessons! I didn't think myself poor–(but was a lot closer to poor– in HS my family was poor enough to qualify me for ‘free lunch' in school)
– we lived in an apartment, no books, no piano, and I had to content mysef with the 16 pack of crayons– I was an adult before I ever own 64 crayons! but I could walk (and did!) a mile or two to the NY botanical gardens, and to the bronx zoo.. And just fifteen cents would take me to museum of natural history (free, like most of ny museums)--and libraries! my nieghborhood boasted a 4 story building--it went from one block to the next, too. (you could enter on Marion Ave. or on Bainbridge! It was one of the largest building in the area! I had all of the world for as my back yard! I had no empathy for Jo or any of the March's! Was I stupid? Or just ignorant of the context of the book? When I articulated my dislike for the book in elementary school, one of the nuns was enraged! How could I not like this wonderful book, these wonderful characters– Jo had such nobility! but most of the nuns in my school were middle class and educated!
but i liked WOW's rant-- someone has to keep up the standards! don't go depending on me! (standards? there are standards? she sez, craning her neck looking for them!)
