The time I failed a test

When I went to college at Furman University (Go, Paladins!), I approached my class selection like a starving polar bear at a zoo buffet. I wanted to take everything. Once, while wandering down the hall in the humanities building, I stopped in the doorway of Dr. Fehler's Renaissance and Reformation class, in which I was not enrolled (yet), and listened to the entire class because there were things I didn't know.

In high school I took chemistry without lab because bunsen burners and CuSO4 were not normal kitchen staples, so when I got to college, fall of my sophomore year, I took Chemistry 11 with lab. It was the chemistry class for science majors and I was a music major, but I really really really wanted to take lab. And then I took Chemistry 12 with lab the next semester because I was not wrong: lab was fun.

Titration, pipets, goggles!

And Chemistry 12 is where I made my D+. On the test about electron valence clouds, I made a D+. Technically, my grade was the second highest in the class (lest your opinion of my intellect darken) and the professor fixed the test, but I, apparently, never forgot looking down at my paper and seeing D+. It bothered me that a professor was capable of writing a test that was so hard I didn't know the necessary information to complete that test successfully. Nerd. I know.

This week I have been buying clothes for my children for the fall season. Non sequitur? Nope.

The website, Free2Work, is dedicated to stopping industrial slavery. One of the main weapons it uses is information. And I am so grateful. I gives me the right to use my consumption like slavery fighting nun chucks.

I spend a lot of time with little boys.

Free2Work gives companies in various industries grades for their efforts in four different areas pertaining to ethical employment including Workers' Rights. My favorite clothing store, which used to get a C, now gets a D+. I'm officially pointing my finger at you, GAP.

While I am disappointed that I do not fully understand electron valence cloud shapes, my failure was just a paper transaction. My consumption of goods is a matter of life and death, dignity and abuse, freedom and slavery.

We are the Samaritan with gold in our purse wondering if we are going to load the broken stranger onto our donkey or walk on by. I certainly don't spend my days sweeping my excess cash into corners, but I do buy things and when I do, I can choose  places like H&M and be the ninja warrior I really am.