Everyone’s back in the classroom this week, and I feel I should be too.
No, it’s not that the days after Labour Day fill me with a wistful craving for school. And no, it’s not that I have a burning desire to bone up on my logarithms, my French conjugations, my multiplication tables or my chemistry elements.
(Heck, I never did get a grasp of those chemistry elements in the first place, so there’s nothing at all to bone up on.)
It’s just that, well, we could all do with a little more education, right?
Me? I could benefit from a little Automotive 101 or a bit of a primer in cooking Italian. After all, what’s not to love about knowing how to give your car an oil change or making your own linguine?
But those are the obvious offerings. I’d love to learn Italian, but I would benefit much, much more from a course in the ABCs of Dishwasher Organization. I hate to put this out there, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to properly load a dishwasher, and nor does anyone in my family. (The husband maintains that he does, but that is not the case.)
In related appliance education, I think the family could really use some courses — say, six or eight of them — on Freezer Basics: Think Before You Throw It In. With a little training, we’d learn to master the freezer drill, and perhaps even know what’s inside it.
Were the husband returning to school, my betting is that he’d enrol in Mole Magic: How To Keep Your Property Critter Free. As it is, he spends 75 per cent of his time fixating on moles, so he might as well write an essay on them. I’m sure he’d get an A.
Learning, of course, should be a lifelong endeavour, and there are myriad how-to things I’d like to learn. I’m game to take courses on how to give myself a pedicure, how to find the best shrimp dumplings and how to remove bubble gum from the arm of a chesterfield — just to name a few.
It’s true these are not mainstream educational offerings, but rather specialized, niche subjects that are hardly run of the mill. Perhaps I’ll start with another course — one that shows me how to find them.
