COLUMN: This column is perfect
The time has come. This is it. You are now reading it. I have decided to finally write the perfect column.
Maybe it’s something in the air. Maybe it’s the alignment of the planets. I tend to think, however, that it is the time of the year. For some reason the end of the semester seems to promote perfection. By now your landlord is requiring perfect rent payment, your registration information for next year needs to be perfectly filled out and your roommates can easily point out all of your glaring imperfections and remind you daily of how you can remedy them. More than anything, however, your professors, at this point, are demanding perfection with assignments, tests, projects and (shudder) finals themselves.
I figured that if you as students were forced to attain perfection in this last week of classes, then it would be highly unfair for me to not try and reach the same level of perfection in this final column for the semester.
Though I will modestly admit to having written some superb columns in my time, I could never claim to have written the “perfect column.” This seems to be somewhat hypocritical, unfortunately, since the title to my column is “Brilliant Solutions” and yet I could not solve the biggest challenge of my own: perfection in my column.
Seeing as how no one else has a column with the same title or purpose as this one (I couldn’t even found one named, “Pretty Decent Solutions”), I knew that if I were going resolve this issue of imperfection, I was going to have to refer myself to … well, myself.
In order to do this I wrote myself an email and had an enlightening on-line conversation concerning the matter. I’ve decided to include the conversation here, in its entirety. The subject title to the email was, “The Perfect Column: FREE YO-YOs!” (I had to get my own attention somehow.)
ME: Sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to write the perfect column. What would it take to do that?
REPLY: Let me write it.
ME: Does your ego have any limit? You’re not writing the column, I am.
REPLY: Why?
ME: Because my ego has no limit either, duh. Now what do I need to do in order to write the perfect column?
REPLY: Well, first of all, the column should have no glammatical errors.
ME: Don’t you mean “grammatical”?
REPLY: Yeah, whatever.
ME: OK, what else?
REPLY: Well, that depends on what type of perfection you are shooting for.
ME: What do you mean, “What type?” I just want my column this week to be perfect.
REPLY: Ah, I see … your column. So your writing has to reach perfection in every characteristic indigenous to your column.
ME: Yeah, whatever. Thanks for the profound analysis, Einstein. Just tell me what I have to do.
REPLY: How about, “Go jump in front of an Aggie Shuttle!” If you want my help, you’d better be a bit nicer to me about it.
ME: OK, I’m sorry. I’m just a little edgy because this computer I’m emailing you with is supposed to be for library research only and I’m getting mean looks from the librarian.
REPLY: Apology accepted. Now, as I was saying, if you want the perfect column, you are going to have to reach perfection on every level that your column has attained in the past.
ME: So everything that my column has been before now will have to be magnified, improved … in short, perfected?
REPLY: Precisely.
ME: If that’s the case, the column I write this week will have to reach perfect levels of ridiculousness, idiocy, pointlessness, mind-numbness and absolute wastes of other people’s time.
REPLY: I think you just hit the nail on the head.
ME: So … pretty much like this e-mail conversation we’re having.
REPLY: I hadn’t thought of that … but yeah.
ME: In other words my very attempt at discovering what I need to write for the perfect column has, in fact, become the very material for it. Brilliant. I knew I could count on you.
REPLY: Perfection would require nothing less.
Deep stuff isn’t it? With that being done, I will be more than willing to come to the end of this, my one and only, perfect columne … I mean, column.
Thank you.
Marty Reeder is still a senior majoring in history education. Comments or perfect complaints can be sent to martr@cc.usu.edu.