North Avenue Trade School
Armstrong Hall
17 February 1994
A Friday in the degeneration of me.
When you wake up and your eyes literally will not open because they have been taken over by an alien being that does not understand the work ethic that goes along with going to college, you know that it is going to be another day. The sunrise outside of the window is another brilliant clue.
At a nine o’clock chemistry class lecture on Arrhenius activation energies, reaction mechanisms, and activation complexes, you cannot stop the yawns from exposing the not so well hidden condition of being extremely desirous of more sleep. The ten o’clock lecture on the derivatives of vectors is not much more exciting. The antiseptic nature of such discussions, though, allow for menial note taking with minimal thought. The thinking part is always reserved for the nights before the tests. That is, unless he, the professor, calls upon you to tell the class the magnitude of the vector < (10 Sin10t)i - (10 Cos 10t)j> The answer, of course, is ten. You knew that didn’t you. Yeah. Everyone knows that!
Eleven o’clock political science is more enlightening. You learn about the powers of the president and why they have grown since the 19th century. Actually, the discussion you have with the professor after class (during your lunch hour) is more exciting. There, you talk about how you can’t impeach the president’s spouse. What can you do then? He looks at your protest letter and says “I don’t think that you will get in any trouble for that. If you really want an issue, start thinking about the “Regents’ Test.” You leave for the student center to get the regular lunch – a cup of “fruit on the bottom” yogurt.
An urge grabs you (or you grab it) to get a “1/4 pound cookie” for yourself as a treat on Friday. There are none of your favorite “dark chocolate chunk” flavors in the front stack, so you hope that there will be some at the register. After snagging a cup of blueberry yogurt, you find the cookie. A “dark chocolate chunk” (overpriced) cookie. When you sit down with your stash, suddenly you find that twenty of the forty stamps you had purchased right before getting your yogurt are missing. They must be somewhere in the student center. Maybe everyone will be stupid enough not to pick up a book of stamps just dropped by the sucker in front of them in the flow of (in)humanity worth $5.80. No such luck for you today. Oh well, back to the yogurt, cookie, and stamps that you do have.
One o’clock “English” is filled with “entropic” ambiguities. Entropic in itself . . . as the universe . . . “everyone get ready for the ‘heat death’!”
It is not all so bad. After all, you did notice that the daffodils are blooming, bees are buzzing, the sky is mostly sunny, the temperature is just right, and the blimp that has been in the sky for the past two days for no obvious reason to you has not crashed into one of the downtown buildings causing a media spectacle. What a shame that would be. Some of those photographers would have to come home from Norway and the SCANDAL that is just SUCKING the attention of the world away from reality (whatever that is). (sorry)
The last thought you willingly construct before going up to write this is, “boy, I really need to oil that bicycle lock (a thought you have been thinking for an entire week of fighting with the lock that needs to be oiled!)”
Now, Harry Connick Jr. and a Diet-Coke are your friends. Temporary, though, because your honey is on the way, and after all, that’s the only thing that matters.