Making My Mark

I have left my mark in Glasgow. Dozens upon dozens of schoolchildren will never forget me.

Glasgow is normally a wet city, but yesterday, the heavens opened up and instead of the usual gentle drizzle, we had torrents of rain, rivers of gutter water, and lakes of puddles. At one point, the wind was blowing so hard, it was impossible to use an umbrella. I pulled my hood over my head, prayed all the books in my bag would stay dry, and sprinted out of the cafe where I had been marking papers. I had to walk a mile in that rain and I cursed silently as I found myself in a huge crowd of small children on some sort of field trip. They were all carrying sports bags, and for all that they had enough energy to scream themselves silly, they walked very slowly.

I was in a hurry and desperate to break free of the crowd, but no matter how I dodged this way and that, I could not seem to get through. A few of the teachers leading the group gave me sympathetic looks, but the sidewalks were crowded with other people too, and it wasn't their fault I had left myself only ten minutes to get to my next class.

"Excuse me," I said several times, to no avail.

For the next two minutes, I trudged along, inwardly fuming, getting wetter and wetter as we moved along at a snail's pace. All around me, children giggled and yakked and horsed around, driving me half wild with impatience. And then suddenly, I saw an expanse of empty sidewalk the kids were, for some silly reason, steering clear of. Gratefully, I leapt into it -- and felt my feet sinking into the cement. Wet cement, and not just from the rain. My feet sunk in a good half inch.

I took two, perhaps three steps, the wet cement sucking at my feet and my face flaming. Too late I saw the ribbon with WET CEMENT, KEEP OFF clearly printed on it.

"But that lady walked on it!" I heard a child's voice pipe behind me. "That one there, in the bright red raincoat!" This was followed by the disapproving rumble of her teacher's voice.

I made myself as small as possible and wished to God my raincoat was any other color.

Next week, I'll be back in Glasgow. If it's dry, I'll try to find where I made my mark. Long after I'm gone, I'll bet my foolish footprints will still be there. And the kids won't forget me in a hurry either.

No, it wasn't the way I wanted to do it. It wasn't the way I've dreamed of doing it. But at least I've made my mark.

Intellectual Limitations

I have a painful admission: my cat isn't smart. I have had literally dozens of cats during my lifetime, so I know.

Here is the merest sampling of the smart cats I have known or encountered in my life:

1) My Aunt Irene in Florida had a big bruiser aptly named Bearcat who could open the screen door. Bearcat weighed at least ten pounds and he would leap onto the screen door, climb up to the handle, and manipulate it until the door sprang open. Yes, I personally witnessed this myself and I guarantee you, it was something to see.

2) My cat Dagmar could fiddle with the cold water tap in the bathroom until she got a trickle of water to drink (sadly, she could never be trained to turn it off).

3) In Mexico once, a very skinny cat my friends and I had been feeding suddenly leapt onto our picnic table, seized our remaining half a loaf of bread after watching us closely for a few minutes, and disappeared lickety-split into the brush with it. The sheer speed and audacity of the deed combined with the cat's obvious scheming impressed me almost as much as the fact that this cat was so desperately hungry it was prepared to steal bread.

4) A woman who lived in my apartment building in New York had four cats; three of them had been trained to use the toilet. She almost never had to buy cat litter for them, though she admitted that they did not flush.

Yep, cats can be very smart, no doubt about it.

Sigh.

The cat who lives with us now is indisputably beautiful. She is graceful and sweet and affectionate. But pour her a bowl of food and she will take one greedy mouthful, then run off. Minutes later, she will come back and demand more food. Until I physically place her in front of it, she will not partake -- and once she has had her snout thrust into her dish, she devours it, so I know it's not that the taste has gone off.

In other ways, too, she has shown herself to be a dimwit. Open the door to let her out and she'll stand there staring until you finally boot her out. Sure, all cats do this to some degree; they can't make up their minds to go out or stay in, but my cat takes it to an extreme; it's as though she doesn't realize I've opened the door. If I'm eating cheese, she will hop up onto my lap and after a wholly gratuitous show of affection, she will eagerly begin to look for it, following her nose. So I move the plate of cheese from the computer table to the shelf -- and so help me, for the next few minutes, she studies the spot on the computer table where it last rested and looks utterly mystified. Never does she look further than that spot -- not even when I reach to take a piece of cheese from the relocated plate. I've had cats who would track that cheese as if it were a mouse and have it off me in seconds.

My poor cat. There are times I look at her and wonder how she ever manages to catch a mouse.

I have another painful admission: I've got a thing or two in common with her.

For the last year, I've had the good fortune to belong to an online writing group. Every week we meet via our computers, texting our writing discussions back and forth. I'm a reasonably fast typist, but I've found it a real challenge to post my comments as quickly as some of the others manage this.

Last week, I accidentally hit the return key and sent a message I hadn't finished composing. That's right, folks: until last week I had no idea that you sent messages by hitting your return key. I was so astonished, I admitted this and the obvious question came back to me: How have you been sending your posts? I had no choice but to admit it: for each and every message, I've been using the mouse to click over the 'send' button. If you aren't familiar with texting, this is the equivalent of putting in eyedrops from five feet away.

Poor me. There are times I wonder how I've managed to get this far in life.