We Came...

3:45. My alarm clock doesn't have AM or PM symbols. Instead, there is a little dot on the left side that lights up when it is AM. Yes, that dot was burning silently away into the darkness. No, I didn't want to believe her.

My alarm clock must be a girl. Rather, a woman. Her name is Bee, because of the noises she likes to make at me. We have a wonderful time, Bee and I. Especially when I am pounding the top of her head with my drowsy fist trying to find her snooze button. All women should come with snooze buttons. I meant that in the most non-sexist, non-chauvinist way possible, which is still a good deal of both, but who's counting?

3:46. Time crawls when you're two-fifteenths awake. I got up without quite knowing which direction was up. My feet found the floor while my head found its way out of a pleasant little dream involving my winning the 2010 WSOP main event championship, with a first prize of 15 million... not dollars, but Mu Alpha Theta trophies I think. They looked an awful lot like the ones I got at the 2003 State Convention. You know, when life was good and so was I. At math anyways.

A low groan escapes from somewhere within my throat. I wish I had some more normal fantasies.

It's 4:15 when I go to get dressed. Blue jeans, white undershirt, and my trusty old Mu Alpha Theta t-shirt from freshman year. "Divide and Conquer" with Einstein on a horse. Einstein wasn't even a mathematician. I ponder this for about as long as I would ponder who I would save if terrorists kidnapped my entire family and all my friends, and I could only save one person. I've concluded that it would have to be... Xiao Jinyu. She's just too cute to let die. Most of the rest of you believe in heaven anyways, and for those of you that don't, well, I'll make sure you fertilize something nice. She's my tortoise, by the way.

A cup of hot chocolate for breakfast. My life is complete as long as I have hot chocolate. At this point, keeping the previous statement in mind, I think the sole reason I came to America was for hot chocolate.

4:19 and my clock in my Corolla -- my brand new, very underpowered, very ironically white, and very sexy-in-a-demure-Asian-way, Corolla -- does say AM. I'm glad. Even though we've only just met, I think I'm really going to enjoy getting to know her, and handle her. She's... amazing. A little skinny, and a little on the weak side, but I still think she's really gorgeous. She lets me sit in her lap and stare at her perfect, round, smooth instrument panels.

I am a sick, perverted human being I tell myself. I am also late. 4:32 AM, which means I needed to be there two minutes ago. There is something extremely but vaguely malicious about the universe, embodied in this going to school at 4:30 AM on Saturday morning. There is no God because God would not let something so evil happen to me, one of His children whom he loves very much even though I have never gone to church and don't really believe in Him but then again maybe I do. There is a God because He has given me math, hot chocolate, and a tortoise who loves me very much. I am still a sick, perverted human being.

The bus ride is long and dark. Breakfast is preceded by waking up with a bad taste in my mouth, a neck cramp, and the realization that I have a bruise on my head at the spot where my head kept falling and hitting a bolt on the edge of the window whenever I fell asleep. McGriddle. Yum. I would almost rather lick the dirt and piss off the bathroom floor. The coffee tasted like my aforementioned half-wish had come true.

I got a little bit of studying done on the rest of the bust ride. I arrived at Stetson knowing about two BC Calculus homework assignments more than when I left my house. I almost prayed for myself to do better. Almost.

... in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Nimish, amen.

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"The truth seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Custom House - Introductory," The Scarlet Letter