Movin' On Up

You might have noticed that my posts have not been as frequent or extensive as in the past. I can explain. You see, many years ago, I got set up with a girl who was new to town. We’ll call her Iguacu. This is very soap opera-ish, so pay close attention. You see this girl (Iguacu) came to town to manage a BBQ joint when her ex-boyfriend needed help staffing the expansion that was going on. But the ex-boyfriend had a new girlfriend. The new girlfriend thought that her buddy Sid might like Iguacu and arranged the meeting. It would also occupy Iguacu and hopefully distract her from fanning old flames. It did, in fact, work out and I eventually phased out my own old girlfriend who had recently been convicted of embezzlement and was busy repaying her debt to society.

I kind of liked Iguacu, so after about six months you can probably guess what happened….

Blog Reader: Awww… they got married and she became Mrs. F’er!

No, the fake titty whore kicked me to the curb and didn’t even have the decency to return the remote control for my garage door. That’s cold. It’s like disclosing to her the location of the Batcave and then having her draw a map for the Joker. But I weaned myself from the free BBQ and learned to hunt and gather food elsewhere. Looking back, I think I really liked the free BBQ and beer better than her anyway.

Shortly thereafter, I had to get my moppish locks shorn so I made my way over to the mall to visit my hairdresser. I always enjoyed my time with her during my appointments - she was hot and actually seemed to “get” my twisted brand of humor, and I dug her pink hair, nose ring and funky shoes. Unfortunately, word of her styling talents were getting around and her prices were rising faster than the price of gas during an oil embargo. Just as I was resigned to finding somebody new (I couldn’t justify $37 for a men’s haircut), I found out that she had just broken up with her boyfriend. So I asked her out and must have caught her by surprise because she agreed to go out with me. I kind of liked her, so after about six months you can probably guess what happened….

Blog Reader: Oh, no! She kicked him to the curb, too!

No, I took her to Mexico, suggested we get married, caught her off-guard again, and the following year she became Mrs. F’er in a beautiful ceremony just a few blocks from where President Kennedy got his head blown off.

Remember those rising prices I told you about? Well, eventually it changed the demographics of her clientele from fun, young upstarts like me to snooty, obnoxious types that deserved a pair of scissors in the temporal lobe. Rather than lose another woman to the big house, I agreed when she proposed a new career in massage therapy where clients mostly just lie down and shut the hell up. She was digging that but realized that spending day after day listening to the CD’s of new age soundscapes might lead her to dig out those old scissors and take a stab at her own temporal lobe. So she went back to college while continuing to operate her massage practice.

Mrs. F’er pursued her interest in forensic science and even did a gig with a crime scene unit. Believe it or not, real crime scene investigators do not run around in Versace suits and Prada shoes and solve exciting murder cases in 60 minutes every day. In fact, they spend most of their time attempting to lift fingerprints off storage sheds after meth addicts bust in looking for Neil Diamond 8-tracks to pawn. But when there were dead bodies around, Mrs. F’er was more interested in what the medical examiner was doing. So she finished her degree and got a job as an investigator for the medical examiner’s office, where she gets to examine dead bodies, take gruesome photos, and type up reports based on her investigations in the field before the bodies get shipped off to the morgue. In her spare time, she enjoyed hanging out in the morgue with the pathologists doing the autopsies. That means she knows how to kill me or you and get away with it. I don’t mess with her and neither should you.

Life was good and then about a year and a half ago she announced she wanted to apply to medical school. I had made the offer the previous year when she had finished her undergrad – “OK, Mrs. F’er – medical school is on the table, or you can take the job at the medical examiner’s office… deal, or no deal” She didn’t take the deal and started poking dead bodies. I put a rubber glove on my head and blew it up with my nose. So I was kind of surprised a year later when she knocked the glove off my head and brought it up again.

The first step was taking the MCAT (Medical School Admissions Test). I figured it was like the SAT – you read some passages about penguin habitats and answer some questions and then you’re done. Turns out that the test is all about biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry, and carburetor rebuilds, as well as the obligatory penguin habitats. Surprisingly, people pay for the privilege to take this exam. She locked herself in a room for four months and spent the entire time memorizing chemical reactions, discovering new elements on the periodic table, reenacting cellular mitosis, and calculating the centripetal force on her ass when I take a corner at 40 mph in the F150. She took the test last April, a year ago, and then had to wait three months for them to get around to finding a scantron machine to grade it. The score was competitive, so next began the application process.

To apply, you send your MCAT score to the school, along with transcripts, letters of recommendation, a pepperoni pizza and the all important personal statement. The personal statement gives you 500 words to explain why the hell you would ever want to go through the time, pain and expense of medical school rather than just get an MBA, buy a gray suit and a Blackberry and make the same money without worrying about uninsured patients or malpractice suits. Oh, and also try to explain why you’re different from the other 8,000 pre-med biology majors that have the same MCAT score, the same killer GPA, and have been volunteering at clinics in Africa every summer since pre-school. So Mrs. F'er focused on her love of examining dead bodies and her time on the vaudeville circuit as a professional cat juggler. You also have to send them money.

She applied to all eight Texas schools so that we could take advantage of the fine public universities that our tax dollars paid to support over the last 14 years, as well as about 12 out-of-state schools as a backup plan. After you apply, the admissions committee reviews your package and throws out your application if your MCAT score sucks, if your GPA sucks (e.g. anything below 3.975 out of 4.0), if they think you’re lying about inventing penicillin, or if they are offended by your cat juggling experience. If you make the first cut, then they send you a secondary application where you tell them that you weren’t kidding about all the stuff on the first application, tell them why you want to go to their school in particular, and send them more money.

Depending on their mood and the weather on the day your application arrives (and whether they feel cat juggling would add to the diversity of their student body), you may or may not be granted an interview. So here’s what happened.

Unfortunately, all Texas schools had already met their quota of cat juggling death investigators and sent violent rejection letters that caused me to shed a tear as I saw the dream of in-state tuition shatter before my eyes while out-of-state schools rubbed their hands together with evil glee in anticipation of out-of-state tuition payments. Those schools granted her a total eight interview invites, five of which she accepted. Which means you then take time off of work, rack up some unreimbursed travel expenses, tour the school, meet the deans, confirm with a straight face that everything you wrote on your applications was sincere, and attempt to explain to admissions committees how you would solve the health care crisis despite the fact that your own government doesn’t have a clue. If you survive that without cracking, then you might get an offer. Mrs. F’er, after dealing with me for the last 8 years, breezed through this phase and received four acceptances and a wait list. Or as she put it, “Holy crap, I’m going to medical school.”

Which brings us to today. She narrowed down her choices and ultimately picked a school in Chicago. While this was going on we also had to do some major prep work to sell the house, and we put it on the market last month after hiding all the porn, packing up my extensive cabbage patch doll collection, and repairing all the damage from the last time Moist Rub, Stiv_OO, and Captain Break-It visited. Despite my attempts to quit my job, they’ve made arrangements to transfer me to the Chicago office and continue my servitude. As of today, the house is under contract, and we may be moving as soon as Memorial Day. Which is a little unsettling since we don’t have a place to live and, while the offer from Mom is nice, it’s a little creepy living as a married couple in the room you grew up in.

Beginning after Labor Day, Mrs. F’er will spend the next two years learning and memorizing every detail of the human body so that she can pass the first step of the licensing exam and explain to me what the hell they're talking about on House. After that, she will get to spend about 60-80 hours a week for the following two years dodging body fluids while doing rotations at hospitals around Chicago. Then she will get to apply for a four year residency and hang out with cool people like you see on Gray’s Anatomy. If all goes as planned, about eight years from today she will be released into the wild and get to spend the rest of her life doing autopsies.

To recap, I asked out my hairdresser so that I didn’t have to pay for a $37 haircut, and now I’m paying four year’s tuition at a private medical school. I haven’t done a present value analysis, but I have a feeling it would have been cheaper to pay for the damn haircut. But I’m pretty proud of her and it will all be worth it after the loans are paid off and I can retire early and buy my own BBQ joint to hang out at.

By the way, Wednesday is her birthday and we're taking donations for the Leper Pop Scholarship Fund. Thank you for your support.