Good fortune helped me survive these thousands of careless, reckless, senseless hours. At one point, I got cajoled and coerced onto the writing/editorial staff of the student newspaper, a position that I subsequently disrespected to the brink of expulsion.
Apologies to all those respectable students and administrators–particularly the long-suffering, long-gone faculty advisor, Doc Dunn, who lost his job because of me–and who also worked so hard to point out the folly of revealing my many disturbances and shortcomings in print. I simply did not get it back then, whatever “it” is. Four decades removed, I can see that I did not fit in with or belong among such a respectable group of scholars.
Take consolation in the fact that allowing me to stay in school provided the best possible punishment for my many transgressions, written and otherwise. I never did actually get “it,” nor did I find a way toward any trade even remotely resembling a “career path.” Charitable descriptions of my job history would start with the word “spotty” and spiral downward from there. Many of you beat me to retirement by years, if not decades. With any luck, my health will hold out long enough to allow me to work the rest of my life for your intelligent children.
Along that same rambling line of thought, “pride in authorship” does not come to mind when I review the questionable, tasteless content in this category, most of which I scribbled hurriedly and poorly at the last minute to fill blank space while trying desperately to duplicate the efforts of my favorite National Lampoon contributors. Those artists knew how to create humor on a page. I clearly did not. Nevertheless, I wrote those words, and I feel obligated to own up to them preemptively, in case I ever get cajoled or coerced into running for an office nobody else wants or cares about, until they see my name on the ballot.
To anyone bored or brave enough to read further, full disclosure requires my admission to the omission of possibly the most juvenile (read: offensive, sexist, gratuitous, excretory, violent, racist, offensive, angry, misogynistic, or just plain ignorant) material ever written during a clearly confusing life stage. I only hope those poorly thought-out efforts constitute a literary rock bottom.