Oops, My Bad Mr. DARE Officer

Darling, faithful readers: I apologize for my absence.  There can be no real excuse, just pathetic appeals to your good natures and merciful benevolence.  First off, I dislike being pathetic.  Secondly, I have reason to question the goodness of your natures and merciful benevolence.   As it turns out, I do not hold those qualities in high regard in this particular forum... your attendance, attention, and accolades are really all I care about.  Speaking of which - why no comments?  Speak up, good people!  Let me know that you're out there! Moving right along...

I have had a rough patch these past few weeks.  Please refer to my aforementioned distaste for pathetic-ness and accept it as reason enough for my sparing you the details - suffice it to say, sometimes life will grab those proverbial cajones, twisting and mangling all the while, for the sole purpose of leaving one (figuratively speaking) utterly immasculated.  Well, color me eunuched.  I was bemoaning my difficulties to Tawny, who is ever the patient listener, and managed to sneak in this bit of sartorial gold: "I'm just tired of school... I've been going my entire life, living for the approval of subjective standards, writing redundant papers, going deeper in debt without any promise of lucrative future earnings and I am just plain tired of it.  It's all a scam.  One, big, fat, sleazy scam.  I think I need to start taking drugs." 

I expected that to be more or less the end of it until Tawny burst into hysterical laughter.  Through her mirth she managed to eek out an explanation, "Do you realize that you just reviled school and advocated drug use in the same sentence?"  Indeed I had.  Decades of "Hugs, not Drugs" indoctrination had failed in that single train of thinking.  My "DARE to Keep Kids Off Drugs" certificates, filed away in some cabinet full of meaningless accomplishments must have been decaying to dust under the disappointment.  It's remarkable what life will make a gal think.

As it turns out, I've lived in such a way to avoid drug dealers.  I don't even really keep in touch with any pharmacists.  Alas, my days of wanton chemical abandon are postponed yet again.  Perhaps I'll look at Berkeley for grad school...