Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 21:38:48 -0400 X-Sender: teddyt@teddyt.pop.crosslink.net Mime-Version: 1.0 To: laura@netgate.net From: Ted Subject: A PC Fable A PC Fable (no spanking) (humor) Dr. Mom and Dr. Daddy, that's what young Ruth W. Etzioni grew up calling her parents -- distinguished scholars at the Chomsky Academy of the Presumptuous Assumption. It was cute, and so precocious was Ruth that she was being scouted at age 14 for an academic scholarship in the philosophy department of an important, though still second-rate, Canadian university. Just one problem. Her hormones decided to erupt while Mom and Dad -- a linguist and a sociologist -- were out of town at the Ninety-Third Annual Convention on Prevention, Abstention and Pretention. When they returned to their bungalow in the suburban town of Durkheim, near the intersection of Anomie and Ennui, just a mile from Brokendream Blvd., they saw a sight that finally opened their eyes. Their home was a mess. Furniture in disarray, beer bottles strewn on the front lawn, the stone statue of a Caucasian stockbroker cracked in three places, and worst of all -- tobacco ashes in the bong! The place looked like Sarajevo after a thunderstorm; like the presidential suite at the J.W. Marriott Hotel near the White House; like a country music roadhouse in Beirut. "What is the meaning of this, Ruth Westheimer?" Dr. Daddy minced, using the girl's middle name -- a sure sign of his disapproval. "Young womanperson! What have you done?" imprecated Dr. Mom. They looked at their politically correct progeny and saw flashbacks that momentarily made them wonder if their own parents had been right about the effects of recreational chemicals on chromosomes. The girl was leaning against the overturned bookcase, her left hip jutting out of her Daisy Dukes, a Virginia Slims dangling from the corner of her pout, and fake eyelashes batting sullen rebellion at her parents. They couldn't have been mortified more had they seen the new Bill Bennett edition of The Fountainhead on the girl's futon. "Emile?" said Mom. At the same time, Dad said, "Deborahtannen?" They nodded at each other in agreement. They had quickly performed an assessment. All of Ruth's educational settings had failed if she was going to start behaving like a, like a, like a mere CHILD! This was one of the few remaining nuclear families in the college town full of intentional communities, and Ruth was about to feel an explosion. Dr. Dad drew himself up to his full five feet eight inches, adjusted the spectacles on top of his head, and announced with all the import of a tenure committee decision: "I believe it is time for an intervention." "An INTERVENTION?" shrieked Ruth! "No, Dr. Daddy, No! NOT THAT. NOT A TIMEOUT!!!!" Dr. Mom interceded, putting her hands on the youngpersonoffemalegender's shoulders. "Your biological father and I, your birth mother, feel that you must be socialized properly so that after your postdoctoral fellowship you will not become another ILYA." Ruth looked puzzled. "Yes, young womanperson. An ILYA. An Incompletely Launched Young Adult who still lives at home because of an overmature and oppressive skills market." "She means you won't get a job and will be leaching off us into your 30s," Dr. Dad explained, helpfully. "But Dr. Dadddddddyyy," stomped Ruth. "You can't punish me! Consider the evaluations from the Swedish Model of Progeny Development!" For a second, Dad pictured Anita Ekberg, but then recalled a breakout session at the recent scholarly conclave, the one on Symbolic Distinctions in the Corpus of Fledgling Learning Paradigms." Then he remembered the key finding, summarized by one wag at the Hilton juice bar as follows: A smack on the tushy and they won't wind up like Belushi." "Yes, dear," Dr. Dad said. "We are going to have to arrange an intervention. Tomorrow you will have an appointment made for you at Failure Analysis Associates." It was the local branch of a national firm that deals with the aftermath of airline disasters, business bankruptcies and juvenile delinquent offspring of professors. Finally, Ruth thought. She was finally going to get the spanking she had dreamed of but had yet to even confide to her analyst. Not even after 10 years of Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday sessions. She fell asleep, trying to concentrate on the concluding sentence of her freshman thesis: "For any transformation which is sufficiently diversified in application to be of any meaningful utility, a descriptively adequate grammar may remedy and, at the same time, eliminate, a parasitic gap construction." But all Ruth could think about was that red brick building she had seen in passing, wondering all these years what happened inside the rooms of Failure Analysis Associates, a mysterious entity guarded by a hairbrush-wielding wooden cigar store indigenous person of North America, representing more than 500 sovereign nations and independent tribes. As an exercise in self-esteem, Ruth was allowed to ride in the family limo by herself to the storefront. She trembled with the anticipation of a time traveler. She was about to enter another world. Standing alone on the linoleum floor, inhaling the dampness of a 1950s basement rec room, her eyes taking in two walls of stucco and two of wood paneling, her ears absorbing the hollering and whimpering of Angela Cartwright, Lauren Chapin, and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, her flesh tingling at the sight of razor strops, hairbrushes, Flyback paddles and yardsticks, Ruth heaved a sigh of pleasure so deep her personal undergarment became aridity- challenged. Then she heard the voice of a supreme being of ecumenical and nondenominational spirituality. She once had questioned what God would sound like, and now Ruth knew: A combination of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mohandas K. Gandhi, squeaking, "We have some issues with you, youngwomanperson." The moment was at hand. She stepped into the private office to begin becoming accountable. ### The author wishes to thank a special lurker who is able to laugh at her own political correctness, the authors of the Internet program called Chomskybot, and, of course, the whole of American academia and much of the Democratic Party.