So there I was, in my suite in Antarctica, eating a hamburger with no pickles or tomato and pondering an existential dilemma, when my cell phone rang. To my mild surprise, it was the President, asking me if I’d seen his puppy. Boy, he loved that puppy, and if he lost him, oh man, he didn’t know if he could restrain himself from launching a gigantic nuclear strike against—guess where—Antarctica. Fortunately for the inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere, I had just written the President’s State of the Union address and had had to do extensive research on the common napping and chewing spots of the First Puppy. “Did you check the hidden passage underneath the Oval Office?” I asked. Of course, I had guessed right, saving half the world’s environment, and this electrified the sex goddess practicing yoga next to my bed. She stretched one last time, threw me a wink, and had just sat down in my lap when I woke up.

Damn, I thought, rubbing my eyes and wiping drool off my mouse pad, which in retrospect didn’t look anything like a sex goddess. I quickly shut my eyes and returned to my slouching position against my desk, hoping to reenter the dream, but when I opened them again, all I saw was a damp mouse pad. Desperate, I bent over and licked it furtively. Nope. Sighing and looking up at my computer monitor, I noted that it was now 4:16 AM, leaving me with three hours and thirty-nine minutes until the English assignment filling the screen was due. The next twenty minutes saw me type random letters on the keyboard, delete them, take the paper on a random tangent about octopuses, delete the tangent, print the paper out unfinished and rip it into shreds, fall into despair, begin to make out with the mouse pad, and finally pretend anxiously that I had not just made out with a square of blue foam. 4:36 AM. I tossed the mouse pad aside and settled into the long and dreary task of drawing literary parallels.

Now, when you’re drawing literary parallels at 4:36 AM, there are certain laws you must not break. First and foremost, if it sounds even a little like a stretch, you don’t write it down. You don’t. Ever. You’d think you could tell if you were writing something ridiculous, but it’s similar to asking a drunk person whether or not they are drunk. Also, keep in mind that I was so far gone from lack of sleep that I was getting intimate with a mouse pad, hoping it would metamorphose into a sex goddess. And if that doesn’t convince you—well, no, we’re not getting into the whole mess with the Barbie doll. Just take my word for it, I was so tired I was justified in forgetting the law. I really was. But this justification did not seem to sway my English teacher, who insisted that six weeks was enough time to prepare a ten-page analytical paper. Well, sure, six straight weeks of working on the paper every day and I probably would have ended up with a nice, cohesive essay. Does anyone really do that, though? I don’t. My hamster doesn’t. And if I had any other friends, I’m sure they’d tell you that they don’t either. So come on, teachers! Get your respective acts together and issue smaller assignments!

Mine is a losing battle, though. Teachers tend to silence progressives like me, because they don’t really want to look deep inside themselves and realize that they’ve been teaching so poorly that the students, and by students I mean me, really haven’t absorbed any of the material at all. I can only imagine the pain they go through when they see my test scores, but that’s good pain. That’s the kind of pain that tells you, “You need to teach better.” And if I have to get a couple less-than-acceptable grades to convey that message, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Like I said, many teachers may misunderstand or even ignore that message, but the change has got to start with me.

But I digress. Back to English class. I realized with horror, three hours of hard work later, that the last three pages of my paper consisted of comparisons between three famous eighteenth-century authors and the common Allium cepa supermarket onion. I’d thrown in some octopus references too, but the phrase “and you can use onions to make other people cry too, like if you shove it down their throat and they choke,” was leaping off the page at me as I sat in disgust and dirty jeans at my desk during first period. Shove it down their throat and they choke. I couldn’t believe I’d actually typed that. My misery grew, and a twist in my stomach bore warnings of a rising tide in my throat, but I was distracted when my cell phone rang. Sneakily keeping it hidden from the teacher, I held it to my ear and pressed the “receive” button. “I hate to be annoying,” said the President, as it began to snow outside the suite, “but have you seen my cat?” I dropped the phone, sat up, and slowly turned the leather chair to the left, and—YES!—there she was. “I’ve been trying to find you for so long,” I murmured. “I hope you have another sweater,” she replied, sensually ripping mine off my now well-muscled chest. I didn’t, but it was the last thing on my mind.

My English class probably won’t forget that little escapade soon. Neither will the janitors. Or my parents. But hey—I’m telling you, that sweater was a goddess for a small chunk of its time on earth. That’s a valuable thing. Come on, would you have ignored its pleas for satisfaction? I’d as soon refuse a Presidential request.