Sunday, February 23, 2003

Join me tonight, gentle and scholarly reader, as I blithely ignore my “Renaissance Literature” paper and instead write a paper for you.

Whenever you sit yourself down for a good bout of bullsh— Wait, scratch that. Let me start over. Whenever you sit yourself down for a good bout of term paper crafting, do you ever notice how long it takes to complete the very first page? During that arduous hour, all sorts of wonky things take place: an urgent compulsion to reconfigure your room seizes you, a sudden hunger for the bane of the National Institute of Health overtakes you, and a burning desire to check the weather—for the next two weeks as well as for tomorrow, natch—washes over you.

Whom should you blame for this? Did Bill Gates’ typewriter become possessed? Perhaps the paper topic doesn’t “speak to you,” as an English student would tell you, Seattle’s Best in hand. Or perhaps the Muse is to blame.

“I’m going to show you the back of my HAND, Muse!” you say with a shake of your fist and with eyes afire.

“Hold on, gentle reader!” I implore, Cane of Good Behavior trained at your skull.

Back in my high school years, my favorite violin teacher—a delightful German woman who lived in a renovated chicken coop without television or radio—told me about her childhood one evening. Some nights, she told me, she would pay her sister some hush money, open the upstairs bathroom window, and shimmy through it to the ground below. The hush money, of course, would keep her sister from divulging all to her parents. And once free of hearth and home, she would run through the cold night air, meet up with some friends, and dance the night away in the basement of an abandoned apartment building.

Why don’t I have as much fire in me, I wonder? And what about you, gentle reader? Would you drop your studying now to run free in the cold night air? Probably not. I wouldn’t do so either. And yet, don’t you sometimes ask yourself, “What am I doing here?”

“What should I do?” you ask, mouth forming a perfect “O,” your question breaking the thoughtful silence.

Revolt, gentle revolutionary reader! Instead of handing in your paper tomorrow, give your professor a nice, thick piece of construction paper. Write “I LOVE YOU!” on this paper in crayon, making sure to form the O’s as little hearts. You’ll be the toast of the town, I guarantee it!