“Who’s Nathan?”

It’s about time we talked about Nathan.  This is one misunderstood guy.  He has more nicknames than I’ve got wrinkles, but they were mostly bestowed upon him by his older brothers who haven’t used his real name since some time before coming to this earth.  They keep him around for laughs.  Nathan is just full of it and his random comments have a tranquilizing effect on the more aggressive tendencies of his brothers that have spared him plenty of the battle wounds he might otherwise have had to deal with.

Nathan is taking a Driver’s Education class right now from a guy who runs his own business and does absolutely everything.  Nathan said he is rather intimidating, strict, and very much tattooed.  He drives a Mercedes which he had outfitted with the brake pedal on the passenger side.  This teacher  takes his business pretty seriously.  Just today,  Nathan was driving me through a residential area when we came to an intersection and when he didn’t come to a rolling near-stop like I usually do, I asked him if he didn’t need to do that, and he matter of factly says, “Mom, this is an uncontrolled intersection -- you cover your brake and scan.”  Since I didn’t understand half of what he said, I just nodded and smiled.

  A couple of weeks ago they took the mid-term exam in class, then each test was given to someone else to correct.  After the exams were corrected the instructor walked around the class and checked each exam.  Everyone in the class watched as he circled something then slashed something else – it was the same motion on every paper: squiggle – slash, squiggle - slash  and every single paper was getting a big fat F.  He got up to the front of the class where this Korean girl  was sitting and was amazed to see just one solitary exam that passed.  The Korean girl holding the exam looks around the room and says, “Who’s Nathan?”