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Scarlet letters

Over the past few weeks I read “The Scarlet Letter,” a “masterpiece” of American literature, for English class.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In uber-religious 1600s Boston, a lady commits adultery with priest. No one finds out about him, but she is punished by having to wear the letter “A” (for “adulterer,” we assume) for the rest of her life. Her long lost husband comes back for revenge on the guy. The love child speaks as eloquently as the rest of them.

That’s pretty much the whole book, except it takes the author 200 pages (plus an extensive introduction, which always appears with the novel but is so boring that we didn’t have to read it) to say it.

For English class, the teacher had us make our own scarlet letters. They didn’t have to be scarlet, of course. We were supposed to make the letter standing for some undesirable quality about yourself, and preferably to have the design of the letter to manifest that quality (if possible). We had to wear them around school all day (and have our teachers acknowledge that we wore them) for extra credit (I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t try for the extra credit, but a friend of mine made and wore a letter even though he’s not in the class.)

Because most of the letters were self-referential, some people got off easy; for example, Gilbert made an “I” for incomplete — and it wasn’t cut out all the way. Chad made a “Q” for “quitter” and didn’t finish coloring it. Megan made an extremely tiny “M,” which I think was for “minimalist.” Justin did “…” for “No words can describe me.” But my favorite was Andrew’s; he did an “L” for “lazy” and cut it out of looseleaf paper without coloring it or anything.

So I should have been more careful in picking my letter. I picked “C” for “cynical.” (But I had to explain to the honors English class what “cynical” meant.) It was cut from a shoe box and was colored in yellow, pink, orange, and green — highlighter colors. I did it the day before it was due, but I think it did show some effort. I cut the “C” with some exactness, and it ended up looking like those letters that teachers cut with templates from construction paper and staple onto boards.

Today I did some hanging out with my sister, Kevin, and Lisa at the mall. It was the same mall we went to almost two years ago where I tried one of those scale things that tells you what your ideal weight should be. I think I still have that printout, but time has probably rendered it illegible. I think it said I was significantly overweight. According to the scale, I’m now 50 lbs. overweight. But it’s in front of a health food store, I think, and so it’s probably just a gimmick for you to go in and buy whatever you can to fix the problem.

In the middle of the mall, we ate at this little crepe place called CrepeMaker (Flash, sound warning). I had a pesto chicken crepe, which was very good. The chef was very friendly and I put some of my change in the tip jar. Also, I got a 1964D silver quarter in change. They’re very hard to come by since their silver content is now worth far more than $0.25. I have several in my collection (all 1964, which must be the most common date or something), but I’ve never gotten one in change before.

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