When I was a kid, my mom made me go to "Tuesday Group" meetings. This was mostly upper-middle class women, some with children, who took it upon themselves to introduce new families to Gainesville. Most of the families had recently migrated to the US.
We met one Tuesday each month at one woman's house, or the clubhouse in another's subdivision. The group never met at our house. We weren't that well-off, and our house was too small for the number of people.
I don't have many specific memories about Tuesday Group, though one really sticks out. I was playing with a few kids on the host family's giant trampoline. After stepping down, a high schooler decided to test me. He asked me if I knew the definition of a light-year.
I was ashamed of myself, to be honest. How could I not know something so simple?
Looking back, I wonder if he was making fun of me because he thought he was smarter than me. (I hear he works for Google now, so hey.) I was a pretty rambunctious kid, so maybe he was getting back at me. Perhaps his little sister (who I had crushed on at one point) asked him to humiliate me. Maybe he was teasing me because he was teased at school that day. Who knows?
What bothers me the most is that I can't read or hear "light-year" without remembering this experience.
Posted by dwc in Personal at 01:54 AM