Sunday, July 3, 2011

A day without pens

On Wednesday, I woke up and realized that today was the day that I could begin registering for courses at the prestigious university I attend. I excitedly logged on to WebAdvisor and prepared myself for the satisfying moment when I could press the ‘register’ button on the three courses I’d picked out almost a month beforehand. And then I remembered that pesky little honours permission form that I have had to fill out 3 times in the past year and a half, and yet always forget I need. Damn that form.



It was 9 o’clock, I had to work at 10, and for some reason I had the misguided notion that I had time to print out the form, fill it out, have it signed and handed in, and still get to work in time to turn on the ‘open’ sign. I dashed downstairs and attempted to print the form, but we were out of paper. All we had was cardstock. So I attempted to print the form on cardstock. For some odd reason, the printer could only handle producing the first page of the form, and then promptly shut down.

My several attempts to revive the printer proving fruitless, I decided that I really only needed the first page of the form anyway, and began searching for a pen to fill it out with. I grabbed what I thought was a pen, but it turned out to be a pencil. I tossed it aside. I grabbed another pen-like object, which proved to be a fat, felt-tipped marker. In desperation, I made a third grab for a pen-like object, and removed the cap, only to find that I was holding a bright pink thin-tipped highlighter, and not a pen at all. I threw it down and screamed “Where the fuck are all the fucking pens?!” At which point both of my rather surprised-looking parents disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the only two working pens that we have.

The next day, my dad gave me 1000 sheets of paper and 36 ballpoint pens for my birthday.

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