Twisting Topeka (21 page)

ThomasG: You need to get out
more.

ThomasG: You assume I’m
not willing to meet?

ThomasG: Or you assume we
aren’t in the same town?

KateM: What?!? Yes, I assumed
both.

KateM: Sorry?!?! I just clicked your
profile and see we are both in Topeka.

KateM: Can you get to the
downtown farmer’s market on Saturday?

ThomasG: 8 am at the cider
press?

ThomasG: How will I know
it’s you?

ThomasG: Will you be
attractively posed like Harriet in Emma’s watercolor
painting?

KateM: I’ll be the clever,
headstrong girl with the obvious character deficiencies.

ThomasG: Obviously.

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successful 4/28/2026 Discussion Board Population=2

ENGLISH LIT 499-SELF-GUIDED DISCUSSION
BOARD

TOPIC: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE BY JANE
AUSTEN, BRITISH LITERATURE

ThomasG: I appreciate that the
status-conscious friend, Mr. Darcy, is disdainful of local society,
as he reflects my own views.

KateM: Let me counter your
generic pasted text from Wikipedia with this relevant quote from
the novel: “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not
mortified mine.”

ThomasG: If we lived in
Austen’s time we probably would never have met. And I can’t imagine
you mortified.

KateM: We still haven’t
met, in real life, so you only get to imagine me.

KateM: Not that you care, obviously,
but I waited for you that day.

KateM: …

KateM: Did I speak the
unspeakable??

ThomasG: “You expect me to
account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I
have never acknowledged.”

KateM: Deflection using Darcy. Well
played.

KateM: Although the wound
to my pride still smarts a bit. Being stood up is the worse cliché
from old teen movies.

KateM: I see now that I was caught up
in the fantasy of human connection.

KateM: I lost myself to the romantic
fictions and the stories of the past.

KateM: For me, the far better
educational outcome is to focus on my reality. I should stop trying
to exceed the low expectations set for me.

KateM: Wanting more than a
diploma and endless hours of manual labor is a waste of energy
because it’s not my fate.

KateM: So thank you for
disappointing me, it’s just what I needed.

KateM: Are you there?

ThomasG: One sec.

ThomasG: “This is the
estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so
fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy
indeed!”

KateM: AAANND I set you up to throw
that Darcy quote in my face. Great.

KateM: Your faults aren’t
heavy. My future feels extra bleak today.

KateM: I’m not sure I
could withstand Darcy’s pride and insolence.

ThomasG: Darcy would pen a lengthy
letter explaining his motives and actions.

ThomasG: I’ll stick with
typing out the words “I’m sorry.”

ThomasG: “Further apology
would be absurd.”

KateM: Stop quoting Darcy!

KateM: Moving on….

ThomasG: I’ve been
thinking…If we lived 10 years ago we might not have met then
either.

ThomasG: Did you know that Topeka High
used to have two thousand students?

KateM: Yeah. And now it sits empty,
with a very public legal battle, hallways full of bats, and an aura
of despair.

ThomasG: The bats are just
a rumor. Or they might be roosting above the lockers. I don’t think
anyone knows for sure.

ThomasG: My cousin went there. He told
me that before it shut down, everyone already had computers issued
by the school, just like now, but they showed up at the school
building every day and used their laptops all together in
class.

KateM: My mom dropped out of T-High
her junior year to help her family. She finished later, online at
night.

KateM: She doesn’t
understand how what we are forced to do now is any different than
what she felt forced to do 20 years ago.

ThomasG: My grandad is always
reminiscing about his own high school years. He knows how bad this
is.

ThomasG: It’s strange how
it changed so fast. From the one-room schoolhouse of his
grandparents to the no-room schoolhouse of his grandchildren. I
think public education jumped the shark and this is all we’re left
with here at the end.

KateM: What do we really
miss though? I’ve read books and seen vids from the early 2000’s.
What do they have in those physical buildings that you
want?

ThomasG: Crowded hallways. Passing
periods. Parking lots.

KateM: You’re nostalgic
for loitering?

KateM: Really?

KateM: What do you think
is the biggest drawback with online virtual public school? That’s
what I struggle with when I talk to my mom. She hated high school.
She thinks I have it better now.

ThomasG: My grandad talks about prom
as a rite of passage.

ThomasG: But online school is one
symptom of a bigger issue. The American Dream got all jacked
up.

ThomasG: Grandad wants me
to have milestones I can look forward to instead of what he calls a
“bleak and meaningless future of underemployment doing mind numbing
labor.”

KateM: So you want to go to
prom?

ThomasG: No! Even my dad only went to
prom to make a political statement, with his gay friend as his
date.

KateM: So, nobody really cares about
dancing?

ThomasG: My grandad wants
me to...well he wants an alternate universe where I look forward to
prom as a culmination of my years of schooling, where we’ve loiter
around all day together with our high school friends, without
community service assignments or the overuse of technology, before
embarking on our successful futures.

ThomasG: Grandad phrases
it more nicely when he’s ranting about it.

KateM: This is perfect!
Let’s go to prom together, okay?

KateM: I’m asking you,
because of course I’m a feminist, and because I don’t want to
assume you’ll ask me. Promposals went out of style long before the
current economic depression.

ThomasG: What prom?

ThomasG: Online virtual
schools don’t have dances.

KateM: But that patio in
front of Topeka High doesn’t look too scary.

KateM: I wouldn’t go
inside the old high school, of course. That building should clearly
be condemned.

ThomasG: You want to meet someone you
met online while trespassing alone at a condemned
building?

ThomasG: This seems unwise.

KateM: No, we won’t be
alone.

KateM: I want a lot of
people I’ve only met online to meet on the courtyard for our senior
prom.

KateM: I want to see them
at their best. We’ll all get dressed up a bit. Maybe stay out all
night.

KateM: Your grandad is right. We need
something to look forward to.

ThomasG: You might be
crazy.

KateM: Is that a yes? I’d
feel better if I knew I had a date to the prom before I go to all
of the bother to create it out of thin air.

ThomasG: My hesitation is
this: I don’t know the etiquette for this situation, but it seems
that a gentleman wouldn’t let a lady plan and execute her own prom
alone.

KateM: Excellent! If
you’ll help, then we can be the Kansas Virtual School student
government prom committee, Topeka Chapter.

KateM: I’ve been reading
the school handbook and the legislature left the structure of
extracurricular activities intact even though they stripped the
funding. That’s how the football teams are still
sanctioned.

ThomasG: Why would you read the school
handbook?

ThomasG: Dare I ask?

KateM: I was researching the
possibility of a book club.

KateM: This prom idea is so much more
fun!

ThomasG: Are you sure I
can’t talk you into a book club?

KateM: :P

KateM: That’s just a bit
of extra emoticon nostalgia for you and your grandad.

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Login successful 5/20/2026 Discussion
Board Population=2

ENGLISH LIT 499-SELF-GUIDED DISCUSSION
BOARD

TOPIC: PERSUASION BY JANE AUSTEN,
BRITISH LITERATURE

ThomasG: Much like our
modern situation,
Persuasion
marks a break with Austen’s previous works, both
in the more biting, even irritable satire directed at some of the
novel’s characters and in the regretful, resigned outlook of its
otherwise admirable heroine, Anne Elliot, who gives me, as the
reader, much to ponder in regards to my own romantic
endeavors.

KateM: I’ve missed your
Wikipedia quotes.

ThomasG: The energy and
appeal of the Royal Navy symbolizes for Anne the possibility of a
more outgoing, engaged, and fulfilling life, so please don’t tell
me your next big idea is for us to join the military.

KateM: My current community service
hours are fulfilling enough. How are you holding up?

ThomasG: I hold in my mind the memory
of your bright blue skirt, of spinning you around and catching you
in my arms.

KateM: That skirt is very twirly and
gauzy. Completely impractical for agricultural work. I love
it.

ThomasG: I’m sorry we got
arrested before I had a chance to kiss you.

KateM: Me too.

KateM: In other news, I wrote your
name in as the cosponsor of our new book club.

KateM: They may call
repeating our senior year a punishment, but at least we have
literature discussions to look forward to together, since we aren’t
graduating this summer after all.

ThomasG: And after that?

KateM: I’m assuming you
aren’t phishing for information about my feelings, and instead want
to discuss our unique position within society to lead our
generation to greatness. I think the answers are obvious,
though.

ThomasG: Second annual
prom?

KateM: You betcha. But next time with
less misdemeanor citations and more parents and guardians as
chaperones.

KateM: It turns out the online virtual
school handbook has some provisions for events, which I found while
I was filling out the forms for book club.

ThomasG: Information which would have
been useful a month ago, back when we were naïve, and trespassing
seemed like an innocent endeavor.

ThomasG: What are we going to discuss
in book club after Austen? We are halfway through her six novels
already.

KateM: The form required a
community volunteer adult to sponsor the club or we can’t hold in
person meetings. He might want some input into selections
also.

ThomasG: He?

KateM: Your grandad. He and I hit it
off at the police station after prom.

ThomasG: ...

ThomasG: This is me being
speechless.

KateM: In Persuasion,
Austen says: “My idea of good company…is the company of clever,
well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that
is what I call good company.’

‘
You are mistaken,’ said
he gently, ‘that is not good company, that is the best.”

KateM: Between talking to your grandad
and reading the handbook, my mind is swimming in ideas right now.
Good company really is the best.

ThomasG: I’m glad Grandad
is clever and well-informed, or we would both have trespassing
fines to work off.

KateM: This extra year of
school would be much less appealing if your grandad hadn’t talked
the judge into keeping this incident off our criminal
record.

KateM: I mean, no point in getting a
diploma, if I have a prior conviction to block higher education or
job advancement.

ThomasG: You sound like you have plans
to work the system. I thought we were rebels, in this
together.

ThomasG: “You pierce my
soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late,
that such precious feelings are gone for ever.”

KateM: That Captain
Wentworth quote was a bit forced there, don’t you think?

ThomasG: Do you like my grandad more
than you like me? Tell me the truth.

KateM: He’s a wise man. I
like talking to him.

KateM: Did you know the original
online school plan was a desperate measure to avoid shutting down
the schools altogether? No one ever talks about that. But that was
before the stock market fraud and the collapse.