Feminist Intellectual Pursuit

We went to see a speaker in the big city the other day and dragged A along thinking she might benefit from other worldly pursuits, and in the end, I'm not sure what she got out of it because the talk was pretty academic, dare I say too academic. To her credit she willingly came along and sat through it, but I think she may be too young for such things.

The speaker was world renowned feminist and radical activist Angela Davis, who is in her 70s and made a name for herself back in the 60s at UCLA, my alma mater. The Stones and John Lennon both wrote songs about her. She is actually a very interesting person, not to mention warm, approachable, and extremely articulate, which sort of made it difficult to follow at times, especially for my pea-sized brain. The place was packed, and the talk went longer than I expected, which usually wouldn't be a big deal but we had places to be and people to meet.

N happened to have lax practice during the talk, and then A&N were to meet up with their buddies H&O later for supper and a sleepover. Problems, of course, came up. The weather was rainy, so I should have had a sense that practice might have been compromised, which it was. I had dropped N off with his buddy CF at his house, and the plan was for them to have lunch and hang, then head to practice together. I was to meet them after the talk and during practice, then take A&N to meet H&O, whereby we would eat and then A would sleep over.

Since I was at a lecture, naturally I turned my phone off, only to realize later that everyone was trying to reach me. There were several messages, mainly that lax practice had been cancelled and where should we meet to get N. I was bummed and tried and failed to reach everyone. I got A into the car and we bolted over to the lax field. The rain kept coming down, and finally we reached the H's and SH said he'd meet us at the green. I felt bad, because they couldn't reach me and figured I would just show up at the anointed location, so he brought N but couldn't reach me. We finally located each other and I got N, then we had to meet H&O, whom we couldn't seem to connect with, either (they never answer their phone).

We hung out in the car before they called us back and told us to meet them at the Bridgewater store. When we got there, there was bad news - N's buddy couldn't make it, so it was just A going for the ride. They also decided to just get A and head home, so our plans went out the window. I felt like this was not only disappointing, but bad planning and could have been clarified to us a little better, but no big deal. N was disappointed, no doubt, especially since A got to go and have fun, but we decided to make an evening of it, anyway, and headed over to W. Leb for burgers at Five Guys and then some time at the driving range.

We had fun, but I still felt the evening was not handled in the best manner. Such is life, you just can't get it right every time. We met up with the crew the next day at the big lax jamboree in the big city, and the kids had fun. The weather couldn't have been nicer, so you have to be thankful for that, even though I had a million things to do around the house but ended up watching other people's kids play lax. Funny how that works.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Mark Monaghan for the pic.