by Remington Murphy

One of the new recruits in my crusade against the Department was Colleen Hughes, a teaching assistant for the Remedial Reading Pogrom, a sort of School of Liberal Arts/Education joint venture (actually, a scam might more accurately describe what it was) meant to sustain the languishing Education faculty, whom the university, thanks to tenure, could not legally fire. Colleen had always been friendly in the past, sometimes stopping by to chat over impotable Department coffee and vending-machine M&Ms, but now her friendliness had about it an air of significance.

Casual chat alone, however, sucker for that I was, could not have sold me on this woman’s uncommonly intense feminine charm. I demanded authenticity, singularity—virtues which do not bloom under rocks, in caves, or for that matter one summer’s day per year on the steppes of Siberia, but which flourish with crab grass abandon as easily on a well-groomed patch of lawn as on a ragweed-crowded, proletarian vacant lot, able to break up slabs of concrete sidewalk with little more than an ingrained will to be noticed. Singularity, in short, addresses purpose; purpose invites action; action comes, bringing with it upshot, and together they tie one on.

Colleen, one of those able to transmute creed into deed, closed the deal for my admiration (in fact, bought it out), and in one afternoon at that! She was with a squad of assistants who were pausing to watch the Army/Marines Day demonstration at our uniperversity’s bell-tower before heading off-campus to lunch. What especially riveted her eye was the “hand grenade toss,” as advertised in gothic black by a gigantic billboard-sized banner. An officer in fatigues was showing the neighborhood kids who had gathered how to pull the pin. The grenade was a dummy, of course, but still there is something perverse about activating an explosive device and then unnaturally blocking the detonation mechanism with a defiant finger, which the officer, betraying a Mephistophelian grin, graciously demonstrated.

Colleen was piqued by this, and I might add, rightfully so. Before anyone could stop her, she had kneed Mephisto in the groin, grabbed the grenade, and lobbed it easily onto the two-story roof of the Eisenhower Memorial Computer Learning Complex.

By the time campus security had arrived to carry her away raving, she had upended a table, strewing promotional literature; smashed half a dozen “It’s a Great Place to Start” mugs, two Mr. Coffees, one jaw, one MX-coned jellybean jar, jellybeans rocketing; ripped the gigantic banner from its bell-tower moorings; and wardanced sadistically, boots clopping, around the groaning prostrate officer.