Student Life

My mother walked into the computer room to find me staring at a blank Word docu- ment.

"Um, hi," I said.

"Hi," she offered in return. "Writer's block?"

"Yup," I said. "Nothing happened last week. Abso- lutely nothing."

"Well," she pointed out, "nothing happened the week before last and you still squeezed a column."

"Yeah. A column about something that happened over Christmas break."

"Well," she said, "your seeds arrived last week. Write about that."

"Well, yeah, but that's hardly a whole column. I have standards, Mom."

She sighed. "Isn't there anything that happened last week? Surely there must have been at least one little tiny detail that you could stretch into a column."

"I'm telling you, Mom," I asserted, "last week was the least exceptional week in the history of public scholar- ship."

"Well, what about Han- nah's coronation? Did you remember to ask her about it?"

"Well, of course. And guess what? Hannah's going to be Queen this year!"

"Good for her! Write about that, then."

"Well, it's not like I was there at the coronation! All I know for sure is that she'll be wearing a taller crown and a sparklier belt buckle than another person who's dressed pretty much the same way as she is. That's barely a paragraph."

Mom sighed. Grabbing the mouse, she navigated to the folder where I save my column documents. There was an orderly list - col- umn1, column2, all the way up through column11 - and then, utterly out of place, a document entitled FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY.

"Have you ever published that one?" she asked.

"Can't you read? It clear- ly states that that file is FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY."

"Well, isn't this an emer- gency?"

"No. That particular file, if printed, will cause the W-P sports teams to lose all of their games during the spring season, make it rain purple Kool-Aid during Dayton High School's prom, allow a weevil blight to smite the ar- ea's wheat, and pretty much destroy life in the Touchet Valley as we know it."

"Okaaaay," said Mom, "we can skip that one. But couldn't you write about something that's happening this week? Like Valentine's Day, or that Knowledge Bowl meet in Kennewick?"

"Well, what will I write about next week, then?"

"I gave you two options, honey. Write about one now and save the other for later."

"Well, I don't know what will happen at the meet or on Valentine's Day, so I'd pretty much just be forecasting and that piece would be super boring."

"Well, at least you'd have a column."

I sighed, burying my face in my hands, as Mom walked out of the room.

And then an idea popped into my headhellip;