Course Overload #8: "A Bedtime Story"

I should have known something was wrong when the school newspaper meetings were moved from 7:30 p.m. on Mondays to 3 a.m. Tuesday mornings. But, I assumed it was just normal college behavior and went on with my day. I was beginning to get suspicious when I was asked to read six of Hemmingway’s best novels in one night. I could do it; I’d just have to stay up all night reading. Besides, it takes more than a few classic novels to stop ME. But the night they wouldn’t let me go home… that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew that I was part of some bizarre conspiracy to measure the effects of long term sleep depravation on short young men with glasses.

I know it sounds too weird to be true, but everything becomes so clear when you haven’t slept for 20 hours straight and you’ve had four Pepsis in the last hour just to stay awake.

The night it all came together in my mind was a night like any other. The sky was black with rain clouds, it was beginning to get deathly cold, and the wind whistled through the trees, as if mocking me for my lack of a jacket. It was a nice night, really. I had stayed up until 5 a.m. the night before, finishing a very important paper on why the government abducts kids who get high scores on arcade games for my Neurotic Paranoia and Sleep Depravation in Young Males class. I was finished for the day and was about to go home when I saw my friend Meg walk by. We struck up a conversation and she suggested that we go out for ice cream. I knew I shouldn’t, because I still had to read another three or four novels that night, and I had a big test in my African American authors class the next day. I decided to politely decline.

“Sure! Let’s go!” I said.

So there I was at Denny’s. Our waitress promptly handed us our menus. I probably should have known there was something wrong when I saw she was wearing a black suit and sunglasses, but I was concentrating on the ice cream I was about to order. I opted for the Oreo Blender Blast, in hopes that the caffeine in the chocolate would keep me awake long enough to finish the conversation I was having.

In a few minutes, the waitress returned with our ice cream. She turned around to leave, but quickly turned back and tapped my shoulder. “I almost forgot. Would you like sprinkles on that?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

“And top secret government tracking drug for the sleep depravation in short guys with glasses experiment?”

“What?!” I exclaimed. This last topping had me slightly worried.

“It tastes like gummi bears.”

“Well…okay then.” I watched as the waitress sprinkled a strange green substance in my glass. Then she walked away cautiously and stared at us from behind a column. I was having doubts about eating the ice cream now. Perhaps “secret government tracking drug” was some sort of cute name Denny’s used for a perfectly mundane topping, much like how McDonald’s has their the happy meals. But then again, “secret government tracking drug” is just a little less inciting than “happy meal.” I was beginning to figure it all out; I know it sounds too weird to be true, but everything becomes so clear when you haven’t slept for 67 hours straight and you’ve taken to rubbing salt in your eyes just to stay awake. I decided that I wasn’t going to eat the ice cream, no matter what.

It was delicious.

Later on, I dropped Meg off back at her dorm. Pulling out of the college, I figured that if I hurried, I’d make it home by midnight, and I’d have the whole night to study. I’d lose some sleep, but I could just make it up later when I didn’t have as much homework. But as I was about to turn onto my exit, all I saw were those silly orange traffic cones blocking it, and suspicious looking men in back suits and neon orange safety vests. They were all wearing sunglasses at night, so they’d done an awful job of blocking the exit, but I still couldn’t get on the highway.

“It’s all right,” I said. “The highway might be closed, but I’ll just take the back roads.”

“No you won’t,” said one of the men who was suddenly standing next to my car.

“Why not?” I inquired, more than a little freaked out that there was a big scary man hovering over me in the dark.

“Because it’s not just the highway that’s closed, it’s the entire county.” With that, I began to cry.

And that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew they were doing it all on purpose. But no time to worry about that, I had to get back to the college and see if I couldn’t stow away in a friend’s dorm for the night.

A half hour later, I found myself in a dorm, my eyelids screaming for me to shut them already. “I guess I’ll be sleeping in your roommate’s bed tonight,” I said.

“No, she’s coming back eventually. You’ll be sleeping at the bottom of my bed.”

“Oh, well that doesn’t sound so bad,” I replied.

“…with all the other people who got stuck when they closed the county.”

The door flew open and in marched more than 20 short guys with glasses. I stared at them as they came in; they all had bags under their eyes and looked as if they hadn’t rested in weeks. Most of us had figured it out by then; I know it sounds too weird to be true, but everything becomes so clear when you haven’t slept for 133 hours straight and you’ve taken to setting your hair on fire just to stay awake.

“At least I’m safe here with you,” I said to my friend.

“Of course you are,” she replied. “Now you relax and I’ll bring you a nice jug of black coffee to help you get to sleep.”

“But wait a minute! Doesn’t coffee keep you…?!”

“Exactly,” she said, putting on her dark glasses.

“How could you?” I yelled.

“They promised me a room in Wonka Hall.”

A single highly-caffeinated tear rolled slowly down my cheek.

Course Overload #7: "Textbook in My Trousers"

Libraries and I never quite got along. Back when I was a wee Matt in elementary school, my class and I were routinely taken to the library for 40 or so minutes of literary torture. The librarian, Ms. Kinderkill, apparently had something against me. Perhaps it was the fact that I never seemed to be interested in reading, or maybe I was just too loud for the library. Or maybe it was because she said she loved War and Peace so much she couldn’t put it down, so I glued a copy of it to her hands to make sure of it. She would always try to ruin my day whenever she had the chance. For example, she would always call on me to answer things I couldn’t possibly know. All the other kids got easy questions, like “How many sides does a triangle have?” and “Do you have legs?” I, however, was usually given a pair of tweezers and a sack of radioactive scorpions and asked to split the nearest hydrogen atom. I had no idea what was in the bag, so when I opened it, out came the scorpions. They stung me everywhere while all the other children laughed and laughed. As punishment for not being able answer the question, I was forced to clean all the chalkboards in the school. With my tongue.

So, you can guess that I wasn’t exactly seizuring with joy when I had to get a book out of the college’s library last Tuesday. When I entered the library, I was prepared for the worst. Sneaking past the large sensors near the entrance, I allowed myself a small chuckle. They want you to think the sensors are to prevent people from walking out with valuable, library-only reference books, but I know better. No doubt they were trying to read my brain waves in an attempt to sense my fear, and, perhaps later on, steal my brain. With a quick glance around the room, I realized no one had seen me yet. Everyone was either reading a book or staring at a computer screen. What luck! Deciding not to waste the opportunity, I made a break for the stairs to the second floor.

But as my hand grabbed the doorknob, something alarming caught my attention. There, behind the main desk, was a security monitor displaying images of various places throughout the library. Forgetting my mission, I simply stared at it, dumbfounded. Why did a library need a security monitor? Is there something so important in here that it must be monitored 24/7?

TERRORIST 1: The bombs have been placed, demands have been made, and the robo-hamsters have been positioned. We are only missing one essential component in our plan to take over the lower half of Canada – a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

TERRORIST 2: Foiled again!

Eventually I regained my composure and made my way downstairs. While opening the door to the second floor, I noticed a sign reading, “No Cell Phones in the Library.” No cell phones indeed, library. That way we can’t call for help. Undoubtedly, the library emits some sort of electronic jamming signal that renders all cell phones within 100 feet inoperable.

It was getting serious. If I was going to make it out alive and in time to watch General Hospital, I was going to have to work fast. Fortunately, next to the door, I spotted a large box that was postmarked for Rutgers University. Overturning it, I dumped its contents on the floor and threw the box over my body. This way, I could sneak around and no one would know.

Looking out from under my box, I saw a librarian quietly putting camera parts in a box. Slowly, I moved up behind her, and tapped her on the calf. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, my voice somewhat muffled from under the box, “I’m looking for books on the mating habits of the Ruby-Throated Alaskan Snowmobile.”

“Please,” she replied in a badly faked British accent, “call me Textbook Muskrat. It’s my code name.”

“All right, Textbook Muskrat, I’m looking for books on the – ”

“You’ll find them on the shelf to the right,” she replied, “next to the Explosive Thermonuclear Arbor Day Unit. Careful, it’s an international incident waiting to happen.”

Well, that explained the security cameras.

Quickly, I grabbed my book and shoved it down my pants. I probably could have just put it in my jacket pocket, but my pants somehow seemed more appropriate for the situation. On my way out of the library, I overheard Textbook Muskrat dragging around a box of heavy camera equipment. “Could someone help me with all this metal gear?” she asked. I slipped out the door unnoticed.

Running up the stairs and out of the door to the first floor, I thought I had it made. I had my book and the library had missed its chance to hurt me. Just then, a vision of Ms. Kinderkill popped into my head; her old, cackling face still haunting me. I couldn’t hold back. The little devil in me had to call my old school and tell Ms. Kinderkill what I had done, just to spite her. But when I took out my cell phone I tripped the alarm. I was in for it now. I quickly ran past the sensors and out the front entrance. Shedding my box, I made a b-line for my car. I had made it. And all before General Hospital.

The next day, there was a story in the local newspaper about what had taken place in the library. For a while, I was scared that I was going to be caught. But lucky for me, I was wrong. The image from the security cameras was made into a police composite sketch printed in the paper next to the article.

All units be on the look out for a walking box.

Course Overload #6: "Magical Mystery Dorm"

The morning of Aug. 25, 2004 was a beautiful one indeed. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and the weather was perfect. Well, it was probably like that. I didn’t really notice or care, because it was the first day of my junior year of college. I had become so bored in the last days of the summer that I had resorted to asking for more hours at work, which was truly the act of a desperate man.

The little piece of paper the college had sent me a few weeks ago said that I should come in and register at 1:30 p.m. (That is, before I lost it.) That meant that I had plenty of time to get ready at my own pace.

So of course, there I was driving to the college at 8:30 a.m. Everything was going as planned. However, about 10 minutes before reaching my destination, I noticed a distant, multicolor glow. There were vibrant greens, deep yellows, blue diamonds, red balloons, and purple horseshoes strewn about the morning sky. The whole scene could be summed up in one phrase: magically delicious. It was hard to take my eyes off of it, and as I got closer to my destination, the sight became brighter and brighter. There was something captivating about it, like pouring Jell-O mix into your pool and tricking the neighborhood kids into going for a swim. I had to know what it was.

To my surprise, the origin of the inescapable light was right on the campus itself. As I pulled in and went to park in my usual spot, I got stuck behind a line of commuters. All had stopped their cars and were gazing at the source of the brilliant light; most standing outside their cars, the keys still in the ignition and loud music still blaring. Some had even climbed onto their roofs to get a better look.

I thought that perhaps this was the Second Coming, and while opening my door to get a better look, I wondered if classes would be canceled the next day. Standing outside of my car, I finally had a decent view. There, in front of me, was some sort of space station or something, roughly 50 stories tall and filled with row after row of smiling freshman girls. Above it were 10,000 rainbows. Hundreds of leprechauns, each riding a unicorn, poured sunshine and true love out of their magic pots onto the elegant structure.

“Someone must have forgotten to take home their mansion last semester,” suggested one onlooker.

“Looks more like a castle to me,” replied my friend Ashley from two cars ahead, wiping a tear from her eye. “I hear that the phones are telepathic in there. All you have to do is think about calling someone, and you speak to them through your mind.”

“Castles don’t have phones, Ashley,” I muttered, still in awe. “What is this thing, anyway?”

“Why, that’s Wonka Hall,” said a man in a purple jacket and silly top hat. “It’s the new dorm for freshman girls.”

“Why slap me and call me Susan! That’s Willy Wonka!” I screamed.

“Yes, it’s true,” said Wonka, proudly taping the side of the mega-dorm with his cane. “I designed Wonka Hall. During the summer months, my Oompa-lumpas built it at night, under the cover of darkness.”

I starred up at the mammoth dorm. All sorts of fancy gadgets stuck to the walls, presumably pumping happiness and comfort into all the rooms. Then I thought about how all of my junior and senior friends lived in what boiled down to tents with severe heating problems.

“The rooms have all the modern conveniences,” continued Wonka. “For example, the toilets don’t flush with water, they flush with cotton candy. And wait until those freshman get a load of the elevator!”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. It had been a dream of mine since boyhood to flush my toilet with cotton candy. I had to see it all for myself.

“Can I go inside? I’d love to see what you’ve –”

Wonka cut me off angrily. “No man has ever seen the inside of Wonka Hall!” he informed. “That is… not without a Golden Ticket…”

Suddenly, I remembered registration! Oh no! I had wasted so much time drooling over the new dorm, I’d forgotten all about my classes! It was already 9:13 a.m., which meant that I had less than seven hours before I missed registration completely! I’d have to move fast!

“Quick, Mr. Wonka! This giant dorm of yours is great and all, but where am I supposed to park my car now that all the parking spaces you built over are gone?”

“You don’t get a parking space,” replied Wonka.

“Why!?” I asked, running back to my car.

“Because you’re a COMMUTER,” replied Wonka with a crazed laugh.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” I yelled, jumping into my car and speeding away in search of a parking spot.

After parking my car somewhere in the next county and taking a cab back to the college, I managed to register with a mere six hours to spare. By then Wonka had disappeared, so I never did get to see the inside of Wonka Hall. I later attempted to take an online tour of the dorm, but the second I logged onto the school’s network, I contracted some sort of vile computer virus that threatened to blow up Canada if I ever turned on my PC again. The last thing my speakers ever played was a woman with a British accent yelling, “Man alert! Man alert!”

But you know something? As I thought about it, I realized that I don’t need cotton candy toilets or unicorns on rainbows to be happy, because I have the love and support of my friends, and a great college experience I’ll never forget.

That is, until I spray painted my name on a parking spot just outside of the MST building. Now I don’t need no stinkin’ friends, because I have a parking spot! In your face, Wonka! HA HA HA!

Perfectly Pointless Poems #1

The Course Overload series will be returning in the next post. Today, I have chosen to educate you with some delightful, classy poetry.

A Ninja is Waiting (4U)


It's true, it's true

a ninja lies in wait

just for you

You think you can run
you think you can hide
but that ninja
is right by your side

and you're gonna die
yes, you're gonna die



Eskimo Love


The Erotic Eskimo;
he likes his lovin'
cold.




One for J.J.


Swinging high above the sky scrapers,
he waits;
the sounds of city life
swirl around him
like the delicate scent

of an expensive perfume.

Clinging to a building,

he watches;

clouds just overhead,
the people look like ants
in some sort of giant,
smog-entwined zoo.
He's your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man;
watching over his home from the heavens,
and doing whatever a spider can.

Course Overload #5: "Cheers!"

I didn’t drink alcohol before I was 21 . Yes, I was a goody-two-shoes, a party pooper, a crazy mofo; whatever you want to call me. I just wanted to wait until it was legal. I understand that given some of my subject matter, my loyal reader(s) could reasonably infer that I’d been perpetually sloshed every time I sat down at the word processor. Well, I’m sorry if I burst anyone’s beer bubble, but I was actually 100 percent sober every time. The only influence I was under while writing is insanity.

Somehow, over the course of my first 19 years, the drinking alcohol hardly ever came up. There’s only one instance I can think of, and that’s the cast party for my high school’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. I had the honor of playing a human statue of the fiddler. Basically, my part involved standing in the lobby for several hours in the same position, acting as a human decoration when people were buying their tickets and allowing small children to drape candy wrappers and used tissues over my extended limbs. I was told that I was the backbone of the production and invited to the cast party.

By the time I got there, everyone, including the all three daughters, the Matchmaker, most of the townspeople, Lazar Wolf, and even Tevia himself, had had too much to drink. The only sober people remaining – me, the cat, and a few ferns – spent the entire time asking people if they were drunk. The answer was always “no,” at which point I would ask them to prove it by doing a handstand or a cartwheel. Around 3 a.m., I began requesting backflips. I was even considering dragging the neighbor’s trampoline into the house around 5 a.m., but by then all the fun drunks had passed out in various compromising positions. I spent an hour or so dressing them all in festive togas, and around the time the sun came up, I simply got up and left. I spent the next three hours walking home, in the cold, with nothing but my trusty overshirt and my dull wits to protect me.

Perhaps it was the disappointment of seeing an entire group of people I respected reduced to babbling morons (with togas!), or maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t have just gone to sleep, for fear of being "shaving creamed" or having my hand dunked in warm water. Or it might have even been the pair of hunters who chased me for a good half mile of my walk home wile waving their shotguns in the air and screaming obscenities. But that day I decided that alcohol wasn’t for me until I could handle it, and 21 seemed like a good age for that.

For the rest of my high school career, my teetotaling  wasn’t a problem. However, within the first few weeks of college, the subject of drinking came up nearly two billion times. It all started when I was offered a beer at a party. “Oh, you go ahead and drink it,” I said. “I think I’ll just have a coke.” The happy chatter ceased. The music ended abruptly. The entire room fell silent. Everyone, drink in hand, stared at me. You’d think I had said, “Oh, no thanks. I’d rather bite the heads off of these kittens.” They simply could not fathom that anyone could turn down a beer.

From that day forward it was my friends’ mission in life to get me drunk. And it wasn’t just my college buddies: People I haven’t seen in years took up the cause too. Around that time saw my decrepit Uncle Jimbo for the first time in about ten years. The first thing out of his mouth was not “hello,” or “nice to see you again.” It was, “Why don’t you have a beer?” Even my girlfriend at the time was in on it. If it were possible to get drunk while simultaneously cutting off my ponytail and driving too fast, she’d have signed me up without my knowledge.

A typical conversation, with anyone I knew, usually went like this:

FRIEND: You should get drunk, Matt.

ME: No thanks.

FRIEND: Come on, it’ll be fun. Besides, alcohol builds strong bones and increases awareness. Consuming alcohol also helps feed the starving children in Kosovo. What, are you some sort of baby killer, Matt? You don’t want to be a murderer, do you!? Their deaths will be on your head! Help! Police! This man kills children!

ME (over the screaming): But, wouldn’t this time be better spent trying to find out what makes life so unbearable that society has to periodically ingest mass quantities of a semi-toxic substance just to be able to go on with our lives?

FRIEND: You bring up a good point, Mr. Frey. Perhaps you should expand on that idea over a nice jug of vodka.

As you can plainly see, it was a conspiracy. I was convinced that there was an entire government agency devoted to getting me wasted. An elite network of spies from all the countries of the world exchanged cryptic passwords and manila envelopes with each other while wearing trench coats and silly gangster hats to blend in, even in the summer, all for the sole purpose of slipping me a Mickey.

For the longest time, I asked myself, “Why does everyone get agitated when I turn down alcohol? Why does the entire world want to get me drunk?” But now I think I finally understand. I’ve figured out everyone’s little game. See, it’s like this: Nearly all my friends worked for Budweizer, on commission. Literally, their college education depended on my intoxication. It’s the only logical answer. In the early 2000s, there must have been only two kinds of people in this world: Those employed by Budweizer, and me. And a few ferns.

People should be allowed to do what they want, as long as its within reason and its not taking away someone else's rights. If you want to drink then fine, I’m not going to stop you. And if I want to drink, and I'm 21 and I’m not driving someplace afterwards, you shouldn’t try to stop me. But by the same token, I should be entitled to not drink if I so choose.

Just keep in mind that if you exercise your right to drink, I might exercise my right to dress passed out friends in togas.

Course Overload #4: "Snooze Blues"

Does anyone out there remember sleep? It was good, if memory serves. I seem to recall it involving something known as a “bed” and another thing called a “blanket.” I also have memories of a third object, called “handcuffs,” but I don’t quite remember what they do.

I also know about something called a “nap.” Well, I know what the word “nap” means, in theory, but I don’t really have an experience to connect with the word. The last time I took a nap was sometime in 2001, and even then, it was because I was run over by a beer truck on the way to class. All I remember is seeing a conspicuously insect-free place high above the clouds, filled with angels playing Playstation games. Then I saw a man with a long gray beard and a shining white robe. He took one look at me and started laughing. The old man gave me a thumbs down gesture, snapped his fingers, and the next thing I remember is limping to English 101 with approximately 20 pounds of extra steel embedded in my body. I guess the professor smelled the alcohol on me from the beer truck accident, and I spent the next 10 hours in the dean’s office trying to explain that I wasn’t drunk; I smelled like beer because an old man in the sky made me take a nap.

By now I’ll bet you’re wondering why I don’t get much sleep. The answer is quite simple: I’m in college now, so I know better. Studies have shown that as we grow older, our bodies need more sleep. However, millions of people from around the globe have died in their sleep, thus it’s only logical to conclude that too much sleep kills you. In fact, sleep is the second leading cause of death among college age adults, the first being death. All college professors know this, and in a genuinely heroic attempt to keep us college students alive, they give us lots of things to keep us occupied during those lonely nighttime hours.

I am very grateful to my professors for doing me such an admirable service. After all, the youth of today are tomorrow’s leaders, so it would be wise to make sure some of us stay alive. Otherwise, children in the future will have a very hard time playing “Follow the Leader.” The game will simply be reduced to “Follow.”

Yet, as great as living is, sometimes I wish sleep wasn’t so deadly. Often, after staying up well past 14 or 15 o’clock, my body begins to malfunction. For example, the sleep depravation has begun to affect my memory. I will honestly not remember writing this, and when I see it on this blog, I will be very excited that I wrote an article. About half way through, I will forget who wrote it, look back at the author, and become excited all over again. This process will repeat itself until someone takes the PC away from me or I have to use the bathroom. Hopefully, I won’t look for something to read while I’m in there, or the vicious cycle will start all over again.

Unfortunately, I’m a commuter, and sleep deprivation affects my driving skills. For example, I often set my cruise control and go to sleep on the way to school. I just let my Taurus bounce off the guard rails for 28 miles until I get to school, like those bumpers they set up for little kids’ birthday parties in bowling alleys. This usually works pretty well, but every once in a while I’ll wake up in a ditch somewhere in Maryland. When this happens, I turn the car around in the opposite direction I was going, turn on cruise control again and go back to sleep.

I’ve also discovered another problem: No sleep impairs my judgment. One time, I thought it would be a pretty good joke if I called the fire department and told them that my grandmother’s cat was stuck in a tree and that they needed to hurry over before she attempted to help him down with her shotgun. I also said the cat was on fire. And full of dynamite. So, a few minutes later, 37 firemen arrived and dashed from the fire truck, waving axes and fire hoses high above their heads. I ran up to them with a look of terror in my eyes, put my hand on the fire chief’s shoulder, and exclaimed, “Tag! You’re it!” About 150 hours of community service have since shown me the error of my ways, so I can honestly guarantee that I’d never do something like that ever again. Oh, while I’m on the subject of firemen, did you know that the fines for calling in a fake emergency are doubled if you do it more than once?

My attention span has been also affected. Sometimes, I’ll start a sentence and never

And other times, I startt mizspeling thinngz. When it gets really bad, I just begin to speak in gibberish. This makes it very difficult for my flapjacks to buy their pants. But that made me realize that I should donate all of my salt to the furtive monkey dishwasher. I hear it's amazing when the purple stuffed worm in flap jaw space does a raw blink on Hari-kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!

You know, as deadly as they are, I’m starting to think that I should just take my chances with this whole “nap” thing.

Course Overload #3: "Shhh!"

“Need a quiet place to study?” the sign read. Why yes Mr. Sign, I do. How did you know?
According to the sign on the door, the second floor of the library was reserved for quiet study, and that’s what I needed. My modern American English class had been canceled for some reason and I had to kill some time before history. And what better way to kill time than studying, aside from hanging out with what I’ve heard other people call “friends.” But I’m not exactly sure what those are, or even how much one of them would cost, so it was down to the second floor for me.

Stepping through the door, I found a comfortable seat near the window, pulled out my history book, and cracked it open. No more than six seconds later, I was startled by a loud noise.

“Thump! Thump! Thump!”

I tried to ignore it, but after a few minutes, I had begun digging out my own eyeball with my thumb in frustration. I needed to know what was making those horrible sounds. A quick search of the library revealed nothing, so I went to the librarian’s desk to find out what was going on. Low and behold, I found the librarian stacking old textbooks into a giant cardboard box.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Shh! No talking in the library. This is a place for quiet study,” she yelled back, tossing in a few more books with a loud crash.

“Well, I came to ask if you could stop making so much noise. I’ve got to study for this history test, see, and…” Before I could finish, another librarian approached and carelessly tossed a stack of CDs into the mysterious box.

This piqued my curiosity. Storing books in a library is one thing, but CDs? I snuck a look inside the box while the librarians conversed, and to my surprise, it was filled with the things nightmares are scared of. Next to about a dozen selections from Opera’s book club were a pair of leg warmers, three Milli Vanilli CDs, every Ace of Base single ever, a copy of Freddie Got Fingered, some Pokémon cards, Plan 9 from Outer Space on DVD, and a stack of E.T. Atari cartridges.

“What’s this all about?” I asked, puzzled.

“If you must know, these are the things we’re sending away,” the librarian replied.

“Sending away?” I was more confused than ever.

“Yes, sending away. Whenever we don’t like something, we put it in a box and send it to Rutgers University in New Jersey. We never put a return address on it, so those suckers have no idea who’s sending them all this awful junk.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. I watched the librarians disassemble an entire Macintosh computer and put it in the box piece by piece. “Why Rutgers?” I finally asked.

“Why not?” the librarian replied. “Now if you don’t stop bothering me, I’ll put you in here too. It’s not all that hard to poke some air holes in one of these boxes, you know.” The thought of being so close to so many horrible things made me scream inside. Without another word, I went back to my history book.

Within a few minutes, I had settled down and was starting to read again, when suddenly, the shrill cry of a siren cut through the air. It wasn’t a fire alarm, no. It was more like a car alarm.

“What’s that flippin’ noise!?” I exclaimed, only I didn’t say “flippin’.”

“Oh,” said the girl sitting next to me, “that’s the Learning Alarm.”

“The Learning Alarm?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, “it goes off whenever someone starts learning something in here. It’s to alert everyone else to your great accomplishment. It’s a real honor.”

“I should have gone to Marist,” I mumbled, gathering my things and walking toward the exit. Just above the door, a small box-like object flashed like a strobe light, and emitted the earsplitting alarm tone. Taking great aim, I tossed my history book at the box, knocking it to the ground. Somehow, it continued flashing and wailing. It must have had a self-contained power supply.

Without even looking, I tossed both the alarm and my history book into the Rutgers box and ran out of the library crying. As I ran from the room, I could hear the librarian shouting at me. “Stop that incessant crying!” she yelled. “Don’t you know that the second floor is reserved for quiet study?”

I never did get much studying done for that test, but I’m not exactly worried about it. I’m a smart individual, and perhaps I absorbed enough information in class to pass. There’s that, and… let’s just say that the test is on its way to Rutgers now.