Same Game, Older Age

As a senior at NC State in the Fall of 1995, I wrote what vaguely passed as a humour column for the Technician, NCSU’s student newspaper. One day I’d love to do something like it again, but for now, like Charlie Brown’s Dad, posting them 10 years later is my form of sitting at the kitchen table, eating bran flakes and looking at old highschool yearbooks

These columns have been preliminarily reproduced here in original form. Printed, they make great bathroom reading material. I recommend HP Glossy Paper. Less chafing.


Being a third-year junior (sssh, don’t tell our Legislature) brings one to a certain comptemplational crossroads in their life. Lately I have been contemplating those weighty issues of Life and College and Work and Just How Many Batteries The Energizer Bunny Has Really Used and I have come to the following conclusions:

a) All I ever really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten.

b) College is a really dangerous place.

c) I really could care less how many batteries the Energizer Bunny has really used.

I know, I know, you are all thinking that I’m going to tell some bittersweet story about hand-holding, or plant watering, or crossing the street, or some other sickening sweet Kindergarten-type lesson.

Actually, I’m going to talk about finger paints.

The thing is, the most important lesson that I learned in Kindergarten was to keep the finger paints on the canvas in front of me and off of the person beside me. This becomes a very important lesson later in life when the person beside you is now much bigger and meaner than you and doesn’t particularly care for finger paints.

Another important thing I learned in Kindergarten was how to do the hokey-pokey. I’m convinced that all of the problems that we have with our educational system today can be solved by teaching the hokey-pokey (and bringing the Muppets back to prime-time television). The hokey-pokey gives kids direction (they have to know their right from their left), respect for each other (they have to turn themselves around in close proximity to thirty or so other people), and balance (they obviously can only put one foot in at a time and have to stand on the one remaining, non-shaken but slightly stirred leg).

This balance, direction, and respect for each other is important because college is really a dangerous place. Not only are there big and mean people who don’t like finger paints, but somewhere on campus there is a group that you are really going to tick off no matter what you do. In fact, I even got a letter from SOSUME, the Society Of Small, Underachieving Mild-mannered Earthlings (who don’t like finger paints):

Mr. Young, We strongly protest your characterization of people who don’t like finger paints as big and mean. In fact, it really ticks us off and if you don’t correct it, we are going to send someone over to break both of your legs. Yours, Milo.

Since it would be rather hard to do the hokey-pokey with two broken legs, I try to keep my finger paints away from these big, small, under-achieving, mean, mild-mannered people who don’t like finger paints. In fact, I leave my crayons at home too, just to be on the safe side. So please remember to keep your finger paints away from people that don’t like them and if you do finger paint somebody, by all means invite them to do the hokey-pokey and while they are turning themselves around, poke them in the hokey and run away before they can break both of your legs.

And that is what it’s all about. Got that Milo?

Jay’s Journal has been brought to you by NAPTIME, the National Association of People That ThInk just like ME, and the letter “J”.

Jason Young is a junior majoring in Classical Cartoon Studies, with a concentration on the early Bugs Bunny. He always tries to color within the lines.