(The sound of a can opening.)

I can’t speak for the rest of you misfits, but oh God summer can’t come soon enough. I’ve been hiding in my office for the last three weeks, and every time someone knocks on the door I’ve had to restrain myself from throwing my stapler at them. I even posted a sign by my desk that says “Don’t hurt them, Chad… they’re your friends.” But really, it hasn’t done any good.

It’s because THE END is near. This so-called professional performance is wrapping up and all the REAL PEOPLE who have been hiding behind all these (clear throat) responsibilities are starting to get restless. Grades? GRADES? Students are already in their cars flying down highway 15 at full speed. There’s nothing we can do. No doubt, the troopers will be swerving back and forth like eager sharks as students try to make it home. I can see it now: STUDENTS ARRESTED FOR HAVING TOO MUCH FUN. Yet, law enforcement didn’t know what to make of all the cans of ether strung about in the back of the car. One young man finally confessed to being a “lawn mowing connoisseur” and that was that. He got twenty years.

And I can’t say I’m surprised. Their behavior has become increasingly… strange. Students seem…well, easily distracted. One student, who reeked of cat pee and wouldn’t even make eye contact, only mumbled the words beer pong Tuesday night over and over… and all I did was ask him about his assignment. When I did finally pry the assignment from his hands, the paper was half burnt and completely illegible. In some ways, I feel like he was trying to clue me in on something. Something crucial and essential about life. As though he had discovered a new of way of learning…via telepathy.

But no… nothing came from any of it and in fact I’m pretty sure he was drunk. I even checked the roster just to make sure he was actually in the class (He had grown a beard so that threw me off.)… cause that happens. People will start the semester, vanish, then show back up at the end with strange dragon tattoos and a heavy desire to pass the course. It’s astonishing, really.

But we’re tired aren’t we, fellow faculty mind-shapers? (more sounds of a cans opening) And what else can be done?

This weekend I took a chance on an 80’s movie called “Volunteers” with Tom Hanks and John Candy. (This will make sense, I swear) Have you seen it? It had five stars out of ten on IMDb.com and I refused to read the plot description. I couldn’t give a sh** about Tom Hanks but I liked John Candy so… it was a gamble. In the movie, Tom Hanks has a rich eastern Yale-student accent which is just—awful. The story is set in Thailand and they’re trying to build a bridge. You really don’t need to know any more than that. It was bad like how a McDonald’s cheeseburger is bad… completely terrible for you, yet so delicious at 2 a.m. Then bad again when you recall the horrible incident the following morning. Oh, the great waves of shame.

But the point why I’m gibbering on about “Volunteers” is this: there is one super awesome and perfect, life-saving, gut-wrenching, slightly erotic scene in the movie and it involves a fish. Tom Hanks is trying to save some woman (I don’t remember who it was) and he has to kung-fu fight some Green Barret guy who’s in cahoots with the opium drug dealing bad guys and well… there’s a fish tank that tries to get in the way… and Tom decides to knock it over because (and here it is) he wants the fish (I think it was supposed to be a piranha) to fight the Green Beret guy… That’s right. Tom wants the piranha to fight for him…And so there’s Tom chanting “kill, kill, kill” and if you look hard enough you can actually see there’s a line on the fish that someone must be pulling… because the fish literally rises up and tries to defend Tom. He really does. And it was truly amazing. He has a couple good moves and then goes down. And that’s my point, people. End of lesson. Get back to work.