We visited a high school for exceptional kids in Vienna today.

I used to wonder how my life would have turned out if I’d had the opportunity to attend a school for exceptional kids. Now I wonder about more practical things, like how a man in his forties should dress to look cool without looking like he’s trying to look younger than he is (eh, dark single-breasted 2-piece suits? what else?).

Beta would, should she pass the acceptance process, have the chance to attend such a school. So to prevent her from asking herself the same question as used to torment me, we went and looked at the school today. I liked it right off the bat because it has a major advantage location-wise over her present school: although it’s about an hour from home vs 15 minutes, it happens to be across the street from an Irish pub, meaning dad wouldn’t mind picking her up now and then.

It’s also down the street from the English book shop I wrote about a while back, where we bought a few books today, including one on mind-mapping, a subject I know nothing about but which seems interesting; the book claims that free association is a way, or the way the mind works, so seen that way this post has a very organic structure.

You know how life sends you angels sometimes? I heard, a month or so ago, at a point I hit about weekly, a low point where I lose faith in humans, a story about a visit someone paid to a fast-food restaurant where she saw a family of white trash at one table, and a homeless man at another table. The homeless man was just sitting, warming up, he had no money to actually buy something. Then one of the white trash people went over and gave him some money. The homeless man then bought something and when he received his change, he put it in the little plexiglass charity collection thing at the counter. I don’t know about the woman who told the story, but it had sort of a redeeming, angelic effect on me.

So today, after hearing the presentation by the principal and walking around for a while looking for Alpha and Beta, a kid came up to me and asked if I was there to tour the school. I had to ask him “what?” twice, because there was a lot of background noise and the first time I didn’t understand him at all, the second time I did but then wasn’t sure he’d asked me if I was there to tour the school, or if I was *from* the school (i.e. it was open house today and perhaps he was there to tour the school and wanted to ask me to show him around).

I must have looked stupid and pathetic. I told him yes, but I was looking for my wife and daughter. He was excellent. What, about sixteen? Tall, good looking, intelligent and articulate. He answered a couple questions I had. He liked the school for the reasons you’d think. He told me about a research project he’d worked on, about the genetic factor in alopecia areata. I mentioned my wife had suffered from that. Alpha showed up, we got to talking, it turns out there’s a self-help group for alopecia in Austria, etc etc. Anyway, it was serendipitous meeting him because it sort of opened the school to me, or opened my mind to the school, in a way the visit otherwise hadn’t (I’m assuming he’s an average student there) and also etc etc.

We went to a cafe they had set up and waiting in line for coffee and cake Beta kept bumping into me and said, “quit sticking out your stomach like that.”

“Actually, I’m sucking it in,” I said.

“Oh, sorry,” she said.

(Excuse me if I’m all sweaty and breathing heavy, but Alpha and I just got back from an hour’s run…)

Then we had lunch at a Japanese/Korean restaurant (run by some Thai persons) up the street from the school. You know how sometimes you choke on your spit? Well, I was sitting there waiting for my yaki nikku bento, choking on my spit.

Coughing and coughing.

“Are you choking on your spit again?” Beta asked me.

“Whose spit do you think I’m choking on, Charlize Theron’s?”

After we finished eating, Alpha and I paid and rushed out of the restaurant while Beta was still sitting at the table, her cell phone disassembled in front of her, trying to figure out why her battery won’t hold a charge. We hid in a doorway up the street and jumped out as she walked past. She sort of rolled her eyes, the way girls her age do when you jump out at them.