I could teach a course in…
Boiling Water: Turning the kettle on 25 times before you get around to making one cup of tea.
Abandoning Footwear: Leaving your shoes all over the house so others have to hop, skip, and jump around them.
Wine Bluffing: Pretending to know what great wine tastes like when the sommelier pours a small quantity in your glass for you to sample.
Transporting Assignments: Dragging your pile of grading to and from school without ever removing it from the bag.
Cocooning: Spending 10 minutes shifting, stretching, curling up in bed – all to find the perfect position (and then not move an inch all night).
Annoying Baristas: Ordering a drink at Starbucks that has more adjectives than badly written prose.
Epic-Fail Joke Telling: Rehearse by moving your lips, adding creative side plots, and mixing up punchlines.
Judo-Style Arguing: Waiting till your spouse initiates the first complaint and then going in directly for the kill (without even a warm up).
Short. Choppy. Sentences: Enough. Said.
Smiling: At others, at yourself, and at those That’s What She Said jokes, especially the ones you never share.
**
What courses could you teach?
If you put “Judo-Style” in front of anything, it sounds pretty tough (Judo-Style Smiling, Judo-Style Wine Bluffing). Ninja-Like works well, too.
Definitely with you on the transporting assignments.
Maybe I’ll start calling myself a Judo-Style Blogger. I like that.
haha! Funny.
I could teach a bizarre course on “How To Carry In 100 lbs of Groceries from Your Car In One Trip” (using every major appendage and carrying the mail in my teeth.)
Can I enroll my kids in that course? Except for the put-things-in-your-mouth part. They’ve got that done.
I’d like to enroll in Wine Bluffing and Judo-Style Arguing.
I’m not sure what I can teach…How about “how to screw up your sign language final?” I just did that last night.
I’m also good at making about 7 trips to the grocery store each week because I always forget something.
You’re taking sign language? Wow. I’m impressed. Hope the final went better than you think it did.
And the trips to the grocery store: yes.
I’ve got one.
How to Bite Your Nails Into Just The Right Shape.
It sounds disgusting; I’ll give you that, but I have the ability to gnaw my nails into the perfect mani. I save hundreds – maybe thousands – of dollars each year. Just buff and add polish.
PS: I don’t don’t do pedis. 😉
You don’t do pedis? Now there’s an image that’s stuck in my head on repeat play.
I could teach a course in “How to find something you know you just set down a minute ago – right HERE!”.
Is the first unit on “finding your keys”? I may need to enroll.
I can co-teach Abandoning Footwear and would like to sign up for Judo-Style Arguing. May I suggest that you do an advanced Annoying Baristas in NYC? I can also teach Making Sure One Person In Your House Is Crying At All Times.
I’m laughing at “Making Sure One Person Is Crying.” Sometimes that person’s me.
You know, I’d like to try that cocooning thing right about now. I’d like a course in Maximizing the Laundry-Holding Capacity of Furniture. Thanks for the smile.
Too funny. Yes, laundry is the Sisyphus of modern times.
She’s Fine Parenting: Reciting this mantra to hubby while ignoring small whines from the baby when I know she’s physically fine so that I can finish reading/eating/facebooking/watching tv.
I love that. I can hear you saying it!
Conversation openers guaranteed to get attention.
Cross stitch.
How to clean poop out of carpet.
The art of eating fish sticks as a gourmet meal.
I’m thinking your third and fourth courses are examples of “Conversation openers guaranteed to get attention,” right? I’ve been there with #3.
How do you get your ideas? I seriously think your topics are amazing!
Good question. Not sure. But thanks! Steal away, if you want.
Question: if I took these courses, would the credits transfer?
I like smiling. Smiling’s my favorite. I could teach the companion course, Loudly Guffawing in Public Places.
We should get together on the Loudly Guffawing. That’d be fun.
Serious-ish question: Would you ever teach grownups?
(I would teach Bad Hair Days 101)
I am a master at Bad Hair Days. Grown ups? Do I have to behave like one to teach them?
Behaving is totally optional, and generally frowned upon. (Only boring teachers behave. =)
Love this!
I think I could teach:
(a) Contemporary Art Collecting
(b) Weird French
(c) Lingerie Shopping (for women of any age & shape)
(d) Teen Parenting Survival
(e) How to find scholarship money where you think none exists (sort of)
(f) How to become addicted to (classic) “Sex & The City”
(g) Shoe Shopping (no flats allowed)
(h) How to get through the day without hubris, while still tolerating those who haven’t learned the necessity for this lesson as yet
“H” is absolutely brilliant. I’m curious about Weird French. Lingerie = nice.
I could teach principles of dog training as applied to children of any age from birth through age 21.
Also, how to procrastinate in any area of your life.
Brilliant. Dog training applied to children sounds like it’d be a great blog post (or book).
I could teach “How to Trip Over Objects That Don’t Exist” and “How to Lose at Online Scrabble 80% of the Time.”
My daughters could assist you with “Abandoning Footwear” training, as well as “Hair Accessory Dispersal in Random Places.”
Jim could teach “Overloading the Recycle Bin With Pop Bottles Until the Stack is Large Enough to Cause Serious Injury If It Falls Over.”
Devin could teach “How to Sleep Through Anything.”
Fun post, Leanne!
Wendy
Hair Accessory Disposal: Vivian is apprenticing in that, but just got her hair chopped off because she can’t deal with the knots.
Laughing at Jim’s course.
Envious of Devin.
procrastination 101
I’ll comment on this later. Really.
Oooh, this is fun! I’ll play!
1. How to Get Out of Marital Relations Three Nights in a Row
2. Crockpot Goodness (AKA: Mama’s Cleaning Out the Fridge Because Tomorrow’s Garbage Day)
3. How to Pee Anywhere But the Toilet (DS2’s got a PHD in this)
4. Cleaning the Bathroom Using Only a Single Baby Wipe
I’m going to stay quiet on #1. I hate my Crockpot. #3: Yes. I’m going to have to try #4.
Funny!
1. how to avoid housework .
2. How to stop mid sentence, therefore annoying everyone.
3. how to clean (when you absolutely must) using grandma on the phone as a distraction.
4. how to hideclean when guests are coming over. (aka the bathtub as an emergency closet)
5. how not to be on time for work.
6. how to leave the house with a depleted diaper bag, EVERY TIME.
And many more!
Brilliant courses! I think your course load would be full. I need to sign up for #4. I usually just kick things into the corner.
It would be funnier if it weren’t true, but the course I’d be the BEST at teaching:
Pretending to Listen.
So sad. And also true. I hear only about 10% of what my kids say. Some of which could be blog fodder. Which is the biggest tragedy, really.
I get that. I have the ability to tune out people noise, which is handy given that I teach Junior High.
– How to get stuck behind that Toyota Corolla that always drives 10 miles per hour below the speed limit in the middle lane of a three-lane highway
– How to create alternate lyrics to popular songs
– How to get an annoying song stuck in someone’s head for an entire week
– 101 times and places not to sing ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’
Larry, I’m pretty sure you have some topics to blog about here. I’d love to hear these stories!
i will volunteer expert instruction in: “How to start a promising writing career and then manage to screw it up royally by going into PR”, but of course i could also teach “How to plan the perfect wedding from 5,000 miles away”.
PR will serve you well on your book tour, E. And I’m serious.
And you did plan the perfect wedding. I still find myself looking at those pictures and remembering. The warming of the rings, the rural VA setting, doing your makeup (me!), you – stunning in that dress, Gospel-y O Happy Day, champagne, My. Navy Champlain man of the match, dancing like a wild child on the cobblestone, and 7 blond women over 5’10” (out of 40 guests).
Perfect? Indeed.
I’m teaching a class tomorrow on ‘how to pretend to care about your child’s imaginary friend who also happens to be a video game character named Sonic’ Oh My Gawd. Help me.
Laughing. “Help me” is my favourite saying as a mom.
Hilarious stuff! Great work mapping out your particular skill set.
Think it’d be useful in the hotel industry? 😉
You definitely are the queen of short choppy sentences. I’m learning. I think. Or not.
Not bad. Kind of. Maybe.
I definitely have some courses to offer. How about:
1) How to put your small child through the kitchen window when you lock yourself out of the house. Twice.
2) How to use your child as an excuse for being late all the time.
3) How to pack your purse for every possible emergency situation.
4) How to get a college degree, and end up in a totally unrelated career.
5) How to read children’s inventive spelling; A foreign language course.
Oh the possibilities are endless! Thanks for the fun post!
Hmmm… how about:
How to feign illness to get out of going to the in-laws.
How to treat the gas empty red line in your car as a bonus 25 miles more gauge.
And… How to answer a myriad of questions with one look.
🙂