Everybody Lies About Hot Dogs

And why Aristotle can suck it.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

When I was pregnant the first time, everyone — everyone — predicted I would have a boy. My mom explained it like this: “People think you’re cool. People think boys are cool. So people think you will have a boy.”

Ok, mom.

I learned in 10th-grade math that this type of reasoning is called a syllogism. In my life, I’ve taken a lot of math classes and I’ve learned a lot from some and not so much from others. In fact, at 41, I’m taking an online math class as part of a mid-life crisis Master’s degree and I’m still not sure if I’m learning very much from it.

Here’s how syllogism applies to starting an unnecessary Master’s program at 41: School is for young people. I am in school. Therefore I am young.

That can’t be right, but math is math so it also has to be right.

Which brings me to the hot dogs.

As a lifelong educator, I want to believe that a lot of learning happens in class. But we all know, the world is a classroom and you can learn great lessons anywhere.

For the past two winters, my kids have been on a ski racing team. This is an obscure, expensive hobby that I won’t elaborate on here. Suffice it to say I spend 21 weeks cold and outdoors in New England so I can watch them put on winter spandex and participate in a 34-second race.

Of course, all ski club parents have to volunteer to help the team out. We can sign up to shovel snow, rake snow, stomp snow, carry buckets of snow, salt snow, or Grill.

I sign up for Grill.

Grill means standing at the bottom of a ski mountain at night when the temperature is well below freezing and cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. Bursts of ski racers and coaches will suddenly appear, starving — starving — from the exertion of their 34-second races.

If you’ve seen the Barbie movie, Grill seems kind of like a Ken job, but it’s one I can also do quite well — complete with dad jokes and a sweet neon ski hat with a pom pom on top. I can even toss the spatula up over my head, spinning it like a majorette’s baton!

Grill starts at 4 pm and ends at 8 pm, which is a pretty long time. It is cold and mostly boring. The fun…