Monday, August 1, 2005

There’s a mandate stashed in the mustiest corner of the backroom, deep in a cabinet labeled INSUFFERABLE with bright red letters, and it basically says Mondays must be shitty. The best course of action would be to find whoever issued this mandate and show him the meaning of retribution, but if this isn’t possible, I suppose we could just find the cabinetmaker. And lock him in the cabinet. With fire.

Do I seem like the type of person who’d enjoy returning to campus, interacting with the student body, and shaking hands, hands still attached to people? I remember tackling freshman year with a gusto long since desecrated, and one afternoon in ’99 I wanted to deluge an entire dorm with friendship. The plan was to knock on every door and introduce myself to everybody. Every. Single. Person.

Yellow Volvox and Cicero, drawing upon wisdom to which I wasn’t yet privy, showed me the correct path. I mean, what was I thinking? That I actually wanted to meet dozens of people, maybe have heartfelt conversations with all of them? Thank goodness I gave up this little charade along with, you know, French braiding my hair and kissing all the boys. Still haven’t acknowledged the utility of pants, though.

After graduation I’ve returned to campus a few times with the sole intention of distributing hiring posters. I’ve evoked the ire of at least one professor, who proceeded to rip up my neon sheets loudly and symbolically. Shouldn’t he have been busy publishing or something? Anyway, I realize this probably isn’t how the alumni center envisioned me giving back to the university, but all that will change this September. It’s career fair time, which I guess is legitimate because you get to pay a few hundred dollars to place your posters on a table. And you know what? Despite my best efforts, I’ve succumbed to a wholly inappropriate emotion. We’ll tentatively call it “excitement.”