The Best Year I Ever Had At School Was The Year I Decided To Drop Out (Part 1)

(This is a fictional account of things that never happened to no one)


Preamble:

"Do we need to have a chat? What is going on? What's your problem lately?" he asked as he loomed over me across the large oak desk. The only response I could muster was, "I...I don't know." I really didn't have any idea what my problem was. I had no idea why I didn't want to be there. As I stumbled down the hall, obviously shaken by my professor's words, I came to a series of conclusions regarding what I feared to be the beginning of the illness of apathy.

Chapter 1: Lethargy Induced By Day-Time T.V

The discovery of my addictive personality coincided with my discovery of free t.v channels. I was a student and, therefore, poor yet awkwardly self-righteous in my anti-television sentiments. We all do it. Students declare more often that, "Oh, I'm sorry I don't watch t.v." than they use the phrase, "Man, I am tanked." Hence, this discovery did more than give me yet another procrastination tool, it also rocked the very foundation of my idealistic mentality. See, the problem was that I watched more than one episode. Yes, that was the clincher. If I had stopped watching just as the hour glass faded into the blue background that fateful day, I can assure you that I might still be ok. (I am still free to say this given that this is the first chapter) I slowly watched myself becoming Lucy, without the dress and the slapstick comedy routines of course. I completely fell into the role of the "not-so-modern" woman. I gave up my intellectual pursuits for the delights loathed by my previous feminist anti-Martha personna. I would spend my afternoons cleaning, mending the socks left behind by old boyfriends. and ironing the creases out of my pillow cases.
My "soap" viewing started off slowly. I found that indulging my brain in some "quiet time" was helping to alleviate my academic stress. Of course, in this context, "quiet time" refers to the fact that the human brain (namely mine in this instance) is less active watching tv than it is sleeping. As I rationalized it, sleeping would have been a waste of time. However, four or five hours of soap operas every day was not really a waste of time as long as I sat with an open book in front of me and flipped pages during commercials. Now, I think it is important to note that I was never a fanatic. I never replaced my friends with characters or spoke back to the characters, but I did become incredibly interested in who was dating who and what had killed the butler in the library with the pool queue. The problem with soap operas is actually the key to their success; the plot never ends and it can take months to reveal the serial killer's identity. You get sucked in and you cant escape.
My first conclusion was brought about as a direct result of what I learned in junior biology. The brain is a muscle and if you don't exercise it, well, it gets flabby. Flabby brains don't get dates for Friday nights. While this conclusion seemed to be sound at first, there must have been more to my illness. Hence, the second conclusion ....

Stay tuned: Chapter 2: Re-integration Into The Arms Of Alcoholism
Coming soon to a blog near you ...