I have found that two things are responsible for all sadness in the world-not getting enough sleep, or falling down the stairs in front of Griesedieck.

When falling down the stairs in front of Griesedieck, I’ve realized that there are actually different ways of managing the situation. The worst way is when you are walking alone-when there are no friends to help quell the embarrassment. When people are walking alone, they tend to act like their fall didn’t just happen. For example, one time I saw this kid hurrying up the stairs when he kicked a step instead of actually stepping onto it. Subsequently, he fell forward onto his face, and he started bleeding out of his nose, mouth, eye sockets and ears.

Since he wasn’t walking with any friends, he had the nerve to pretend as if his fall hadn’t just occured, kind of like “Ohhh, yeah I just fell flat on my face, and now I look like a large mass of bloody, pulpy tissue-but I am going to act like none of that just happened, even though there are about 30 people circled around me taking cell phone pictures.”

The other cause of sadness in life is sleep deprivation. I am feeling sleep-deprived right now, and because of it, I’m sad.

I got three hours of sleep last night, and I had a test this morning. Whenever I have tests, I always have a huge stack of papers and stuff that I need to study. I always study these important and priceless documents, up until the very second that the test is in front of me. Mmmmm. The beauty of a freshly Xeroxed test. Still warm from the machine. Oooh. It is a sensation of not only the sense of touch, but also the sense of smell. The smell of paper and ink, an indelible combination that never fails to arouse me.

Ha Ha, I actually hate tests-everything about them. All that stuff was a lie! So anyway, I always put the stack of papers under my desk or something as soon as the test arrives. Today though, I forgot to pick the stack of papers back up off the ground once the test was over. I left them behind, like fallen soldiers in battle. I was thinking about this as I was walking back from class-my teacher will see those papers and possibly think I was using them to cheat!

Ahh! The humanity!

And you know what? That circumstance can be attributed to my lack of sleep, and consequent outward displays of idiocy and lapses when my mind fails to operate at all.

Before I typed up this utterly useless jumble of words, I was taking a nap. I woke up from this hour-long nap only about 20 minutes ago, so my dreams are fresh in my head right now-all of them, which is scary, because I just realized that some of my dreams are really, really messed up.

So I had a dream that I was asking Fr. Biondi how much sleep he got last night, and he told me he got three hours of sleep. That factoid made me feel at ease, because I had only three hours of sleep, and what do I do? I go to class, eat food and watch TV. Biondi, on the other hand, runs an entire stinking university (an amazing one at that).

You want to know what I think is weird about all of this? Sleeping is like a reward in itself, so it’s crazy that people consciously choose not to get enough of it.

I just realized that my day has started off as a train wreck because of my sleep deprivation. A monumental disaster of unparalleled proportions, and I feel like it will only get worse, because I didn’t sleep enough last night. And maybe, just to top everything off, maybe I will be walking up to Griesedieck by myself tonight, and maybe I will fall in front of a bunch of people right on the steps. And then people will laugh at me. Then I’ll scream, “I hate you guys! I just want to go home!”