A Rip in the Seat of Symbolism's Pants

Bear with me as I get to the point.

Actually, getting to the point may be more entertaining than the point itself. Eye of the beholder.

My day yesterday. I have to make some stops on the way to work. I go to the water company to pick up a contract. I go to the bank to pick up a new ATM card. On the way out of the bank I plop down in the car and hear a sort of crunch, and I think to myself, "I hope my wife didn't hear me crack the passenger seat!"

The next stop is the first of two work stops, first at one of the faculties, then on to my office. As I get out of the car the wife tells me to stop and turn around. What's the matter, stain on my ass? No. Remember the crack I heard? It wasn't a crack, but a ten inch rip in my pants' crotch. Luckily my sport coat was long enough to hide it for the first stop, but I couldn't spend the rest of the day like this!

Luckily we found a seamstress within a block, and I got it sewed up immediately. The price? Oh, just a symbolic few lits...no we've gotten to the point: I don't think people here understand symbolism.

If I tell you to pay me symbolically, that means you give me a button, or just shake my hand...you don't give me a few coins. That's not symbolic, it's just not a lot of money.

I've heard the word used countless times to describe a drink. When a drink is offered and declined in this country, the offerer will insist that the decliner have just one small drink, symbolically. As the decliner, in that case, I will put the glass to my lips and pretend to drink, then put it down...shocking all present! They'll insist I didn't drink, and I'll say, "Of course not: if I had it wouldn't have been symbolic, it'd have been real!"

As you may have guessed, that doesn't quite fly. But I did get a giant rip in my pants sewed up in three minutes for three lits, and that's a good deal.

Thoughts on September 1st

September 1st is a big deal in Lithuania, students bring flowers to teachers and principals and everybody dresses up for the first day of school (I'm wearing French cuffs, la-dee-dah). Here's some things I noticed:

• Mothers go bananas making sure their kids look perfect.
• Teenage boys look stupid, because either nobody told them their shirt collar belongs inside their sport coat, or they were too stupid to believe that the 70s are over.
• Way more students showed up for this than will ever show up for class.
• So many, in fact, that a good chunk had to stand outside (for some reason 400 seats were arranged for 800 people in a hall that can only seat 400 but could stand 1,000).
• The girl standing next to me had a femullet.
• An increasing number of freshman have repugnant face piercings.
• What's most interesting of all is that year after year we listen to the student anthem, Gaudeamus: I do indeed mean *listen* and not sing, because even when each student is given a piece of paper with the words on it, nobody sings; it's worse than everybody murmuring the hymns in church. Why do we do it? It's tradition they tell me. The tradition of showing that we can't learn our anthem? What do I know they say.

Resolution: I'm gonna learn the words to Gaudeamus and sing it out loud next year at the ceremony. I will bet you that everybody will look at me as if I'm the weirdo for standing out rather than the only one doing as he should.