Welcome to the new term!

It's that time of year again. While the other two FCN writers have already started the fall term at their respective education institutions, I had one more week of responsibility-free summer to enjoy lallygagging, twiddling and generally doing nothing (except a little bit of work at General Mills). The last week was, indeed, filled with such sophomoric fun as taking IQ tests, designing snazzy Ts and going a whole day with ridiculous semantic limitations.

I also went for a slow walk in the hot dusk of fading summer by a river a few miles from my house, picking wild berries and skipping rocks, before taking a refreshing skinny dip in the muddy water and grabbing a soft serve at the local concession. The entire time I was partaking in this painfully quaint exercise, I had Mungo Jerry's "In The Summertime" stuck in my head.

OK, that was FCN's Snickers Bar moment. I'll go ahead and do something manly now.

[To simulate the time I am gone, please go grab a drink or use the facilities. This page will not automatically reload and will therefore be here when you return. Unless, of course, a sibling, parent, TA or well meaning friend gets to the terminal while you are absent. Go drink, release or do push-ups or something!]

As I return to my keyboard, after painfully tearing off a couple handfuls of chest fuzz (yes, I do have chest fuzz and, yes, I did just tear some of it off), the vapid melancholy of returning school wraps around me like a dark bearskin rug, only scratchier. In an effort to visually portray the pain of returning, I've found several cute pictures of crying school children that, in some small way, reflect my own feelings.

It isn't that school isn't or can't be fun - some of my fondest memories were created in a classroom under the "watchful" eye of a professional educator - but unstructured time is more conducive to the kind of fancy free excitement that titillates a free soul like myself. For instance:

Having to get up before nine in order to prepare a homework assignment that wasn't done the night before because you were partying is a real drain.

Having to get to lecture by a specified time in order to keep the teacher from automatically dropping you from his class and having to sit in the front next to Madame PJ and her Slobbering BF is a real drain.

Having to skip the all night pizza eating contest at Mo's in order to study for a test that I will probably fail anyway is a real drain.

But I do it anyway; we do it anyway. Starting today, I rejoin a class of citizens, so progressive and forward-thinking that we sacrifice four (or five, or six, or seven) of the best years of our life in order to make tad bit more money when we are overweight, cranky and have back trouble. I re-pledge my allegiance to a way of life that puts the dereliction of responsibility and the abrogation of duty on the front burner and manages to learn a little about something (or other) along the way.

Yes, school starts today. But my first class doesn't begin until tomorrow, so I think I may grab a handful of skipping stones and head back to that river. I may even get a chance to do some tanning, which might cover my new lack of chest fuzz.