I hate caffeine, I do. It plays hell with my digestive system (it’s a diuretic), it makes me shaky, and it’s bad for my heart. This last reason is my primary motive for cutting down (cutting down rather than surceasing entirely, because of my love for coffee) on my intake. Those of you who know me are probably aware of my heart condition, called paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (or PSVT), which is a nonserious affliction wherein an errant piece of tissue in the heart can form a closed circuit (remember that it beats to electrical impulses from the brain) and cause it to beat hard and quickly (I’ve clocked my own at close to 200bpm). Caffeine is thought to aggravate this. So, after my cardiologist and and G.P. and my urologist all told me to watch my caffeine, I decided that, by George, I’d cut down.
I mention all this because I had coffee this morning, and the results made my “Liberal Arts” class even more unpleasant than usual (speaking of which: once this semester is finished, I’ll post a collection of my teacher’s “nitwitticisms”).
We were covering Tobias Wolfe’s “The Night In Question.” Once again, my class (most of them, teacher included) proved their astounding ignorance by missing the important parallelism and personalising the What-Ifs until the major dichotomy (read: altruism v. pragmatism) was obfuscated.
The important aspect of the story (for those who have read it) is that God was dangling a watch in front of Mike. God was Frank’s abusive father, always testing and punishing for pragmatism. Frances, ever the atheist(?) wants to protect Frank from his priority-skewing [sic?] religion just as she protected him from the slaps of good ol’ Dad.
My teacher was ridiculously insistant that we all make a decision as to Frank’s “sermon,” as if any of us could possibly make a choice without a) being parents or b) being physically put in that situation.
Indigestion sucks. In the future, I should use Pepto Bismol instead of non-dairy cramer. Or Alka-Seltzer. Hmm…. there’s money to be made there……