Incas of Emergency

Retardcapades; or, our heroine meets with her advisor

This afternoon I met with my dissertation advisor about my alleged project. I was overtired from trying, at the age of 29, to re-learn to ride a bike, which project has rather eclipsed the reading I should have been doing in recent days to prepare for this meeting. So I had pounded down a lot of coffee in the minutes preceding the meeting, and tried to gather my smartest-sounding thoughts.

Cut to the meeting: I was attempting, simultaneously, to drink my third glass of iced coffee and to nod knowingly at something my advisor was saying, and the fucking straw got wedged up my nose. I raised my head from the glass and looked at my advisor in shock, with the straw dangling from my nostril, and said, "Can you fucking believe this just happened?"

I totally interrupted whatever pertinent thing he had been saying. My advisor looked at me coolly and gave me an inscrutable smile and an incredibly eloquent shrug. "So," he said, "how is your project going?"

I reprint the foregoing almost verbatim from the phone account I gave to Christian immediately after it happenened, along with the following two thoughts:

1. Thank god no one has ever thought I was cool or smart, because the truth would be all too shocking.

2. Thank god my exams are all passed and my prospectus is all filed, and none of my committee members can rescind their signatures in light of new information re: my ability to conduct myself like a mental competent when it counts.