Prepoceros

This afternoon I was sitting on a patio outside the law school when a little boy, five-ish years old, walked right up to me and announced, “My name is Tigger. T-I-Double G-E-R, that spells Tigger!”

“Yes it does,” I said, being rather untalented at interacting with small children. I was afraid I was going to have to figure out if he was lost, but then his mother appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Dylan, please come carry your bag.”
“My name is—”
“Tigger, please come carry your bag.”

Dylan/Tigger got the bag as requested, then came back over to me and said “[mumble mumble] T-T-F-N! T-T-F-N! Ta ta for now! Ta ta for now!” before scurrying off.

“Bye!” I said, again lamely.

The only place I’ve ever seen TTFN is on a dorky list of “IM abbreviations” that my dad used to have taped to the side of his monitor. It listed the standard LOL, ROFL, etc., but it also included some weird ones (BG = big grin, FIIOOH = forget it, I’m out of here) that I couldn’t believe anyone ever used. The list seemed to be designed to make parents look silly.

But now I’m wondering . . . is TTFN/”ta ta for now” a standard thing people type/say? Is it a Tigger thing? Is there a TV show on which Tigger spells his name and then yells “TTFN! Ta ta for now!”? Maybe the kid is just an enthusiastic speller and collector of acronyms.

The last two days straight were a flurry of eight-to-three non-stop activity, or at least non-stop sitting around in public, which takes almost as much energy.

Today the highlight of my day was taking a three-hour nap and still making it to Kroger before the free coffee and cookies (and bread and cheese and peaches and cinnamon pastries and blue corn chips) ran out. Ahhh.

Another day, another eight or nine speakers to sit through. Same as yesterday, the organizers allotted way too much time for everything, apparently in an over-eager attempt to avoid the crunches of years past. The hour-long writing assessment, for example, was scheduled from 9:00 to 10:30. The next event, literally 100 feet away in an adjacent building, was slotted to start at 11:00. Well, they got us to the testing center fifteen minutes early, so the assessment started promptly at 9:00, and since it was timed, it took exactly an hour, leaving us with literally an extra hour to sit around and chat, mostly about how long we were having to wait.*

Today we got boxed lunches. It’s a step down from yesterday’s enormous spread from Goode’s BBQ, but hey, still free. No complaints here.

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One of the first things I learned today at law school orientation is that there are 255 people in my entering class. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but that’s a heck of a lot of people, especially when they’re all packed into an auditorium. It was a bit overwhelming, but fortunately we won’t convene in one room again until graduation, or so we were told.

The best thing about orientation was that after the introductory speeches they split us up into “mentor groups,” each consisting of about ten 1Ls, two upperclassmen, and a faculty advisor. A dozen new people at once? That I can handle. I think I might even remember the names of half the folks in my group, a feat I’m considering a win.

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Last week I noticed that Sam’s pee, instead of issuing forth in a glorious stream, dribbled slowly onto the ground, so that it took him two or three times as long as usual to do his business. He didn’t appear to be in pain and acted normally otherwise, but I took him to the vet anyway.

She took a urine sample and some x-rays and found a mild bladder infection and two bladder stones, one of which was lodged in his urethra. That one was so large that at first she thought it might not actually be a bladder stone, since he shouldn’t have been able to pee past it. But it was; Sam’s just a trooper. I really hope he hasn’t been in terrible pain for the last few days.

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