Distractions from news are
sometimes welcome
By H.G. Miller
Kansan staff columnist
The
following story is almost completely true, except for the parts I made
up, which are most of them.
I woke up, and I suppose that went well enough. Something seemed wrong, though. Some sort of impending doom that was just waiting to ruin a perfect day before I´d even gotten out of bed.
I guess it was the sun.
We´ve never really gotten along that well, and its bright light flooded my retinas in a way that seemed to mock my lack of enthusiasm for the day.
“I got up on time,” it seemed to say. “What´s your problem?”
Pulling the blinds shut, I began rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and walking to my bedroom door, which I missed by about four feet, thus walking into my closet.
After saying a few choice words to some of my favorite Biblical characters, I untangled myself from the hangers and headed for the safety of the bathroom. Here is where the real trouble began.
Maybe some of you have had this similar experience: The bar of soap has disintegrated into a few slivers about the size of toothpicks. Having learned that conservation is essential to our survival as a species, you carefully rub these shards of soap across your body, hoping to catch everything.
Needless to say, about halfway down your left leg, the soap disappears completely and you´re left with nothing but some sudsy water to complete the job.
I happened to be leaning halfway out of the shower, one hand reaching for the cabinet containing a fresh bar of soap, while the other gripped the light-weight plastic shower curtain as my feet desperately hoped to remain in contact with the little grip strips my landlord so lovingly installed in the shower stall to keep me from hurting myself.
So, I don´t remember a whole lot about the fall, just that when I came to, the shower curtain had failed to support my weight and was now working as a funnel for the ice cold water spouting out of the shower nozzle.
I had movement in all of my limbs, so I decided to get up, at which point a sharp pain in my neck told me I should probably stay put.
One begins to have new perspectives on life when laying on the bathroom floor for reasons not related to alcohol.
What am I doing with my life?
Does all of this really matter?
Don´t I have a paper due for lit class today?
My meditation was soon ended by a knocking sound at the front door. Still having trouble moving my body, I had just gotten into a kneeling position when the door opened.
“Maintenance,” a cheerful voice echoed through my apartment as I quickly realized I had forgotten to bring a towel into the bathroom.
At about this point, most of you probably are wondering where the point is in all of this mess.
“Sure,” you´re saying to yourself, “we´ve got you in the bathroom, wrapped up in a plastic shower curtain and trying to explain the situation to a jovial maintenance man who probably doesn´t have a full command of the English language, but how does this comment upon the problems of students at the University of Kansas?”
“Ahh, good point,” I say.
I guess it seems to me that there are already too many “newsworthy,” “timely” and “opinion-oriented” columns in the Kansan and not enough quotation marks. Maybe I´m just trying to justify my lack of interest in the happenings around campus and pawning them off to you as quirky little commentaries about everybody´s lack of interest in campus activities.
Nah, that´s too easy.
Why pretend any of this was written with a point when I´ve already forgotten what it is? This column contains no facts, no insights and really nothing of relevance to give you any reason to want to read it.
However, it does have mild violence, situations containing nudity and vague references to profanity.
I hope you have enjoyed my little diversion from the problems of the
world, and you may now go back to the news part of this paper and read
about politics, war and sports.
H.G. Miller is a Hutchinson senior in English
