The young miss out on so much
It was cold outside.
I knew this before walking out a door or looking through a window. Being an early 21st century man, I went to my laptop in a warm and cozy house and looked up the temperature on the Internet. Yahoo! said my town was 32 degrees.
Yeah, that's cold. I didn't need exposure to the environment to convince me.
I tossed on a jacket, vaguely considered a scarf and cap like I vaguely consider deodorant on Pajama Bottom College Football Saturday, and walked outside. Frost, I would soon have to battle, decorated the windows of my Saturn.
"Good morning," a teenager across the street said.
As I opened the door to my car, I noticed something odd about the teenage boy using a plastic cup to scrape frost off the cracked windshield of his Dodge Neon. He was wearing shorts.
"Thirty-two degrees is still freezing," I said across the cold asphalt of the street.
The kid looked at me like I'd said something in Latin, or Klingon, before he hopped onto a driver's seat that was probably as comfortable as a plate of cold cuts, and drove off.
Much like venereal disease, Third World dictatorships and the crop circles, the fact that this kid didn't know 32 degrees meant he should wear pants probably had something to do with the public school system.*
According to our culture's current educational structure, it's the public school system's job to teach our future doctors, bankers and Subway sandwich artists about the rules of life before sending them off to college, where they'll eventually drink too much beer and throw up in a stranger's lap.
So, since the schools obviously aren't teaching our kids enough about life, here are a few lessons from Professor Offutt's School of Practical Physics:
» The fact that my neighbor was wearing shorts in the cold probably meant he was confused about Freezing Point Depression. The point at which liquids freeze and thaw is the same, so he must have thought that meant 32 degrees was warm.
Which means he was probably really confused by all that frost.
» Watching a skateboard punk do a header off concrete steps and land face-first on the Wal-Mart parking lot made me realize the schools probably weren't teaching things like Newton's third law of motion for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Not that seeing a lip-ringed skateboarder in baggy pants pull a "funniest home video" moment isn't hilarious, I'm just worried about his education.
» How about the Second Law of Thermodynamics? In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy will always be less than it was to begin with.
Practically speaking, this means however tough you think you are after a couple of beers, there's a much greater chance of getting your butt kicked than if you were sober.
» Occam's Razor? When two theories make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is better.
Theory One: The oven is set to 400 degrees so the pizza I just cooked is probably hot.
Theory Two: The oven's set to 400 degrees, but in order to properly determine the temperature of the pizza, I'll stick a slice in my mouth ...
So, in my ongoing effort to simplify everyone's life, I'll simplify matters even more: the answer to 43 Down on the New York Times Thursday crossword is "creosote."
That's all you'll ever need to know.
* Of course I don't really blame the public school system for VD, Third World dictatorships or crop circles. I only blame the public school system for embarrassing me in gym class.
