a dog walk

In the true spirit of a blog, here are a few themeless rambles.

Fred-fred and I took a very nice walk today. Odd, that since I live two blocks from Severn School, I’ve never seen the new academic buildings from closer than across the football field. Now, the fact that I don’t send my kids to the local private prep school is a matter of philosophy, economics, and handy public schools which are, all in all, not bad.

Still, I’ve continued to think about it as if it were the same venerable institution with creaky, ivy covered buildings. It’s not. Wow. Someone’s Harvard endowment contribution must’ve taken a wrong turn in New Jersey and ended up funding a couple academic buildings worthy of Bill Gates. The buildings are huge, the lounges are college caliber, the lunch room is enormous. And get this--there’s a pendulum in the entry way. That’s right. A big one too. Swinging from a ceiling 3 stories up. Severn School thinks its the Smithsonian now.

And then I noticed this plaque on one of the brick columned colonnades connecting an old building to the mega-new one. A plaque stating that the colonnade was a gift of--people I know. People whose kid Gabe used to go to school with at Summit. A kid whom he still considers a friend despite the fact that his attempts to interest this kid in a get-together over the past couple years have not panned out. Which I’m ok with since every time I used to have to wait at the electronic community gate to transport him to their chateau I was gripped by an unattractive surge of counter-snobbery and wanted to say to the speaker-box “No thank you--I’d best send Gabe up to entertain your child while I wait here so as not to bring cooties into the neighborhood.”

The truth is, they’ve never behaved snobbily toward me, nor has anyone else who sends kids to prep school--I must just get some kind of weird kick from playing inadequacy mind games.