brilliance

q. shenaynay

Last night Fa had her last final for her first college semester, which was not an exam but rather a performance of her chamber choir at a long-standing campus tradition called Holiday Sing. It's a big hoopla where a brass band performs and Santa Claus comes and raffles off teddy bears and the Dean says A Few Fitting Words and stuff like that, and all the faculty turns out to act repentantly jolly toward the half-dead remains of students upon whom they have just inflicted the torture of finals, and who, as a result, must now drag themselves out to the annual perky holiday singalong deal with more Big Red than blood in their veins.

After the performance, Fa's music professor escorted her straight over to the dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, introduced them to one another with a great flourish of enthusiasm, and then, while Fa stood there turning six shades of pink, gushingly informed him that this freshman Fa person standing before him is "brilliant." A "gifted writer." That he should be forewarned that the university is "probably going to have to create classes for her." And oh yeah, I shouldn't leave out the really good part where she told him that Fa was homeschooled (for Heaven's sake!), and must have A Whiz Of A Mother. Heh heh. But, Gentle Readers, do not let me stray from the main point of my story.

Did I mention that Fa's professor told the Dean that I must be a Whiz Of A Mother? Oh, right. Moving ahead, then...

So anyway, back home later, Beatrice naturally revelled with the rest of us in our stellar moment of Home Team Rah-Rah Go-Fa-Go woo-hootery. But then, being such a Helpful Little Sister, she felt it her duty to set the old family equilibrium back to rights. You know, just make sure Fa's pretty blonde head was still the proper size for her pretty neck after all that puffery. Especially since, as of that very evening, Fa was officially on Christmas Break and will be Home All Day Every Day Sharing a Very Small Room With Beatrice for a month.

Beatrice chose her weapon carefully: a blonde joke. A blonde joke nonchalantly told. To a blonde. A brilliant blonde, so we're told. This is, of course, the most satisfying sort of blonde joke, when it meets with success.

Beatrice: "So there were three people standing around in a circle: a brunette, a dumb blonde, a priest, and a smart blonde..."

::intentional pause::

Fa: "But wait. That's not three people."

Beatrice: "Sure it is."

I leave you to imagine the rest of the conversation. The main thing is, it doth appear that Fa's evening of academic adulation has not toppled the Beehive off its axis. So now Whiz Mom here needs to get back to decking the halls with four lovely people of the sort who apparently don't exist in the world of blonde jokes.