Arg. I just came over to the Department of Theology a while back in order to turn in my office key and my exams. They instituted a new policy that they want to keep old exams for faculty who are leaving. But when I tried to hand in my files from the last year, I was told that I had to have all the relevant information on the exams. In my case, this meant that I had to write in all the section numbers and semesters on the files of old semesters' work where I hadn't printed such information on the exams. So I had to get to this computer link and look up all the section numbers and such and then hand write in all that stuff. Hardly slave labour, I know, but I hate drudgework of that sort, especially when I was in a hurry to get back over to the library to work on my Odes of Solomon research.

But it gave me the most amazing/awful flashback of childhood, of having to write 500 sentences as punishment in 4th grade: "I will not throw snowballs at Chris Krup during recess." I hated that punishment, and dragged it out so long that I think I had to miss a day of school to get it done before returning, much to my mother's joy. This love of doing sentences caused me to sucker myself out of a free musical education by refusing to do my punishment for what I thought the excusable offense of forgetting to bring my drumsticks to rehearsal during 6th grade, causing me to go down a chair and have my number of sentences double from 50 to 100. This went on until I was 19th chair and, in an insane battle of wills with my band director, owed something like 50,000 sentences, at which time I left the middle school band.

So this time, I just did the work, despite the annoyance. Is that a workable definition of adulthood? That, perhaps, and a bit more courtesy? Because I don't remember if I ever said it back on the playground: Sorry, Chris Krup.