Responsibility 101

I’ve started hearing that people in my generation are incapable of serious work. This is untrue. For an example, look at me.
I have the tremendously serious and useful job of writing jokes for newspapers, whereas other people, older people, clock their hours at frivolous organizations like the World Bank.
I know a bit about being a responsible adult. Honest. After all, I took a class about it.
It was called Life Skills, and it was mandatory for sixth graders.
The teacher, Mrs. Malvosi, started her lecture by telling us how one of the girls in the class before ours had set her hair on fire during the first assignment.
As we no longer had a full fire extinguisher, she would reserve the remaining foam only for real emergencies. If one of us set ourselves ablaze, we’d have to go to the next classroom over.
Our first assignment was to follow a recipe for Orange Julius, which is a drink that doesn’t require any heat to make.
You just had to mix orange juice, milk, ice, and about five pounds of sugar in a blender.
It was the most delicious thing I’d tasted. But I didn’t get much time to savor it because my groupmate sliced her finger on the blender and I had to walk her to the nurse’s office.
As I came back, I noticed a few more students heading to the nurse. Evidently, Mrs. Malvosi had moved the class to the next assignment.
Each of us was given a handkerchief to embroider. The boys thought it was a super girly activity.
Then Mrs. Malvosi gave everyone massive freaking needles. Suddenly sewing began to look a lot more interesting.

I had fixed loose buttons on a couple of teddy bears before this, so compared to my classmates, I was a professional.
To take our minds off the fact that our class was steadily shrinking in size, I asked my classmates what movies they had watched that weekend.
While we talked, I ended up sewing two corners of my handkerchief together. But compared to the kid who put a needle through his thumb, my work could have come out of Dolce & Gabbana.
As he left to go to the nurse, the girl next to me said she had seen “And Then There Were None.” She hadn’t liked the ending.
The final assignment was painting a wooden board. Mrs. Malvosi told us that if we were careful and did a good job, she’d treat us all to hot cocoa at the end of the period.
She put the kettle on while the remaining six kids in the class each took a board and started painting.
Miraculously, no one stabbed anyone in the eye with a brush or drank lacquer or dropped a paint can on anyone’s foot. It looked like we would make it to the end of class in peace.
Mrs. Malvosi told us to set our boards to dry and she would pour us hot cocoa. And one genius put his board on the stove.
We didn’t have any more Life Skills classes after that. Not for the rest of the year.
Even so, I figured out what responsibility means. It’s a never-ending slog of putting out fires. And not everyone is as capable of that as they think they are, this columnist included.
So if you think you might do some serious work someday — it’s not impossible, even if you’re at the World Bank — keep an extinguisher handy.

Copyright 2024 Alexandra Paskhaver, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.