I hope that my writing is superfluous, like a Krispy Creme doughnut — full of light, air, and sugar. The world can be a dark and terrible place, and sometimes people just need to get away from reality for a while, bask in the fine glazed coating and leave with sticky fingers and a craving for milk.

For people who have a problem differentiating reality from fantasy, it is the job of those who love them to introduce them to writers like Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath. (Well, maybe not Sylvia, since she was suicidal and all.) My job is to help those who are firmly rooted in reality — the ones who just want a nice vacation away from family troubles, bad grades, and (*shudder*) politics.

AUGH!

I hate homework! Hate it, hate it, hate it! I’m brimming with brilliant dialogue, but do I have time to write it out? No, I have HOMEWORK.

I mean, honestly. I had all A’s on my midterm report card, I’m making a 3.86 and I graduate in May. I can stand to slack off a little, right? RIGHT?!

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I am married to a computer programmer who has programmer friends. Naturally, this leads to interesting tales of tech support terror, where these men have to help panicking, angry people find out what the problem is and then fix it.Here is how to talk with tech support if something in your computer goes wacky at work.

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My mother is a saleswoman. She’s good at it — she enjoys meeting new people and talking to strangers.

When I was in choir in high school, we had to sell things. Candy bars from boxes. Things in catalogues.

When I realized that I would rather die a horrible, painful death than go door-to-door selling things, I understood that I would never be a saleswoman. At least not a good one. Or a happy one. I knew that, when I was old enough to have a choice, I would only sell things over my broken, bleeding body. Which, as you can imagine, would be unpleasant for the buyers and somewhat of a logistical problem for me.

A week ago, one night, I couldn’t get to sleep for crying. I’d started thinking about the German guy on campus and how he reminded me of Richard and Gisleson, my arrogant, liberal teachers who didn’t like me and weren’t afraid to try to impose their views of writing on mine. I can’t tell anymore if I’ve ever hated them. I have a problem with feeling guilty about things, so I’ve always made it a point to tell myself that this was their fault. This wasn’t something I had to feel guilty about. But part of what that did was make me hold on to it. What I had for them wasn’t a grudge — it was just that they still had power over me, the power to hurt me, even though they were nowhere remotely near my life anymore.

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