"We learned something really interesting in English class today," Lynette told her husband Hugo over the crock-pot chili she had made for dinner. "Professor Madgek told us that compound-word adjectives are groups of two or more words that come directly before the noun they modify." She leaned toward Hugo and pulled down the corner of his sports section. "Here's the interesting part--you have to use a hyphen when the compound-word adjective comes directly before the noun, but not if it isn't directly before the noun."
Hugo looked up from the basketball box-score reports and stared at her.
"Yeah?" he said. "You think that's interesting? Is that the kind of useless-ass crap you're learning at that fancy-pants community college? I hated English in high school, and I got negative-zero interest in hearing about it now."
Lynette dropped the corner of the paper, which floated down into Hugo's half-eaten bowl of chili.
"Here's another thing about that college," Hugo continued. "If your smarty-pants Professor Madgek knows so much, why ain't he teaching at the state university instead of misfit-toys community college for brain-damaged teenagers and washed-up, middle-aged housewives?"
Lynette glared. "For your information, Professor Madgek is very smart. He used to teach at a university in the Midwest, but he likes community colleges better. He said it's a community-outreach thing for him, make the world a better place by providing learner-centered education in a nurture-based environment."
"Sounds like he missed his life-long calling," Hugo replied, wiping chili from the point-spread listings for this weekend's football games. "He ought to be a bleeding-heart nursemaid instead of a professor."
Lynette grabbed Hugo's bowl and dropped it into the sink with her own. Hugo didn't notice the nerve-jangling clang as he kept talking in his cringe-inducing voice.
"You know what? Your precious Professor Madgek seems like a pansy-ass fruitcake, if you ask me. He spends his whole day running off at the mouth about adjectives and poetry--that sounds pretty queer-ball homo to me."
Lynette rinsed the chili residue from the bowls and rubbed them hard with the scratchy soap pad. She resisted a near-overwhelming urge to break one of the bowls over Hugo's suitcase-sized head as he left the table, carrying the sports section to the upstairs bathroom for his nightly half-hour, post-dinner session on the toilet.
While she dried her hands on the flower-bordered towel, she thought of how she rubbed those same hands over Professor Madgek's rock-hard abdominal muscles that afternoon in his office after class. He had kissed her with that heat-probing tongue of his that always made her head spin. Pansy-ass fruitcake? Lynette chuckled. Queer-ball homo? Not hardly.
Then she thought of the new ingredient she had added to Hugo's chili just before she served it to him: detection-proof poison.
Hugo looked up from the basketball box-score reports and stared at her.
"Yeah?" he said. "You think that's interesting? Is that the kind of useless-ass crap you're learning at that fancy-pants community college? I hated English in high school, and I got negative-zero interest in hearing about it now."
Lynette dropped the corner of the paper, which floated down into Hugo's half-eaten bowl of chili.
"Here's another thing about that college," Hugo continued. "If your smarty-pants Professor Madgek knows so much, why ain't he teaching at the state university instead of misfit-toys community college for brain-damaged teenagers and washed-up, middle-aged housewives?"
Lynette glared. "For your information, Professor Madgek is very smart. He used to teach at a university in the Midwest, but he likes community colleges better. He said it's a community-outreach thing for him, make the world a better place by providing learner-centered education in a nurture-based environment."
"Sounds like he missed his life-long calling," Hugo replied, wiping chili from the point-spread listings for this weekend's football games. "He ought to be a bleeding-heart nursemaid instead of a professor."
Lynette grabbed Hugo's bowl and dropped it into the sink with her own. Hugo didn't notice the nerve-jangling clang as he kept talking in his cringe-inducing voice.
"You know what? Your precious Professor Madgek seems like a pansy-ass fruitcake, if you ask me. He spends his whole day running off at the mouth about adjectives and poetry--that sounds pretty queer-ball homo to me."
Lynette rinsed the chili residue from the bowls and rubbed them hard with the scratchy soap pad. She resisted a near-overwhelming urge to break one of the bowls over Hugo's suitcase-sized head as he left the table, carrying the sports section to the upstairs bathroom for his nightly half-hour, post-dinner session on the toilet.
While she dried her hands on the flower-bordered towel, she thought of how she rubbed those same hands over Professor Madgek's rock-hard abdominal muscles that afternoon in his office after class. He had kissed her with that heat-probing tongue of his that always made her head spin. Pansy-ass fruitcake? Lynette chuckled. Queer-ball homo? Not hardly.
Then she thought of the new ingredient she had added to Hugo's chili just before she served it to him: detection-proof poison.
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