#1

The beginning is always the most difficult part.

You need to start, you need to get going. You must stretch out all your parts and pull them back together and find your focus and make it work.

But you don't want to. You're just laying there with nothing at all, nothing to build on. You want to take action, to accomplish something, but it isn't enough.

You feel so safe where you are, not doing anything at all. You just want to stay in this comfortable little place not causing any trouble.

But there are tasks ahead and things to do. You need to pull yourself together and get yourself moving. Now. The clock is ticking. The clock is ticking. The clock is...

My third dose of snooze time is up, and I'm giving my alarm clock all the daggers of hatred my bloodshot eyes can produce. I hate my alarm clock; it sets itself thanks to atomic clock broadcasts or something, and it remembers the time to which you set the alarm if the power goes out. So it's pretty much guaranteed to never, ever fail to wake you up for class. Thus: I hate the little bastard.

It's like something out of a Sharper Image catalogue, only I didn't have to sell my car to buy it.

It was a damp, dreary Monday morning. It wasn't raining, just this weak drizzle that moved more sideways than down, thus rendering all umbrellas and hoods useless and pushing water straight down people's clothes. You don't walk in this weather, you swim.

Step after step I splashed my way down the cracked sidewalk past the apartments and greek houses between me and my class. One still had its lawn covered in spent beer cans and a pair of emptied kegs left over from the weekend's football fracas.

Dry house, my ass.

The intersection of 17th street and Anderson Avenue is busy from 7 A.M. to 11:00 P.M. every single day, and even longer on weekends and game nights. You walk up, hit the red button to tell the signals you're there waiting at the curb, and you just stand there and watch the lights.

I had the sequence memorized after a week here, and many times a day I go through the routine. I start walking when I see the last car making a left-hand turn get through and I'm halfway across the avenue by the time the "WALK" signal pops up.

It's nothing original, all students living directly south of campus have it down just as well.

Well, all but the occasional newbie freshman, but we don't talk about them. Forget they exist.

I continue North along 17th to the Union, just a couple hundred yards from Anderson. I grabbed a copy of the school paper, the Collegian, and turned straight to page four, Opinion. There were two columns with the faces of people I don't know with pieces of writing I'd save for later.

Here's something you should know about K-State. Call (785) 395-4444. You will hear: "This is the Kansas State Collegian Reader Fourum. What do you have to say?"

Every day, around noon I'm told, the Opinion Editor of the Collegian checks this voicemail account and types it up, and they put it in the paper for all to read. They never take names, they never check facts. From time to time, a subtle ethnic slur slips through. It's immature, it's useless, it's childish.

And the whole student body is in a state of savage lust with it. Greeks rant on one another, streakers brag of their exploits, and undergrads top off weekends in Aggieville (wait until I tell you about that place) by calling in drunk and speaking their minds, which are always remarkably empty to begin with.

Today was the usual crap. "Pi Phis this", "Theta Xi's that," "I peed on the King Hall Fork," and so on and so forth. I kept reading as I went outside and down the wide path that went straight to my destination, Umberger Hall, home of the 500-seat Room 105 where I was to attend GEOL 125: Natural Disasters. Also known as naptime.

Step by step and word by word from the paper, I found my way there without incident. I had only one statement left to read when I sat down while the professor brought the computer and projector online to present another lovely slideshow of death and destruction wrought by nature.

"I'd like to apologize to the facilities staff for the nasty mess I left in the men's room in Justin Hall, only I'm too busy laughing," it said.

I chuckled a bit, I confess.

I figured someone plugged up a toilet after too many slices from Gumby's or tossed a roll of tissue right in the hole just for laughs. Besides, class was starting, and I was ready for some quality shuteye.