My past week of randoms: Pat, overheard redneck, and hug a hero

I officially started my Fall semester at Motlow. This will be my 6th semester at this little community college, and hopefully my last. Parts of the campus are circa de 70s, while other portions look like they don't belong. Most of the buildings are..ugh, but the library is amazing.

The upstairs, where I usually nerd away

The Foyer

Sorry, I digress... Remember the SNL skit on Pat? Is it a he? Or is it a she? It's Pat!

My first day of Sociology, my professor walked in and looked up and declared, "Wow, just chicks!" Then, looking at "Pat" said,"Well, one dude, that's all right man, we're not complaining." The class just sat in silence, but I thought obviously my professor was grossly mistaken, this person was certainly a girl, right?...

Our next class, our professor asked Pat a question.. something regarding how their home life influenced who they are, but it included the professor saying something about Pat being a boy. Hmm. By this point, I was downright confused. Because our professor only uses last names, I could never tell if it was Ms. or Mr...fast forward to our 4th class. We walked in today, and our prof was referring to Pat as "Miss." Okay, now, I was just baffled. After the whole childhood-sociological-boy talk, I assumed the professor knew something we didn't. I spent the rest of class doodling and checking my curse word count since the professor curses like a sailor. Irresponsible you say? Not really. I realized my first class, that 20% of our grade is class participation, but the prof doesn't like to call on you if he thinks you're paying attention. He likes to catch people off guard, so all you need to do is interject and give one really good answer, and he purposely won't call on you for the rest of the class. (Side note, at first this annoyed me, because I'm a know it all, but then I realized I could use the rest of the class doing other work, so I just work ahead in the book and take my own notes) 

At the end of class, after I had made 21 checks on the curse marker for today, I went up to said professor to clarify the gender of Pat. I told him I was confused because I had heard him refer to Pat as male & female....and the ANSWER WAS????????

She was waiting for our professor this am in the teacher's lounge, and set the record straight. I feel really bad for her too. She seems pretty shy, which is probably why she didn't speak up during class. Still, this goes in my random items category. 

Oh, rednecks... While waiting for one of my classes to start, I overheard two rednecks discussing having to take a foreign language. Knowing full well this was good blog material, I started jotting down their conversation.

Boy #1: I don't really see the point. I'm American, why do I have to learn Mexican? I don't ever see leavin' here.

Boy#2: Yeah, but if you head on down to Alabama, dey got some Mexicans down there. You gotta talk that Mexican there.

Boy#1. I ain't never go down that far, I all got is right around here.

And lastly.. ever heard of hug a hero?....

 
These are dolls supplied to military kids for free for when their parents deploy. They take a full body shot of the parent, and then place the picture on the doll. Speaking as a former Navy wife who's been through 2 deployments, I wish I had had these for my kids. However, my story regarding how I heard about the doll isn't sappy, so let's get back on point... One of my girlfriends recently got divorced to her military spouse, and he's been a bit of a dead beat, so much so, that the deployment daddy doll has been hanging out with her son a lot. Today, she said when she dropped him off at school, her son said, "By dad! I'm going to school now, I'll miss you," and placed his daddy doll in the car seat. I'm going to rename this, the "Deadbeat Dad Doll."