Today is Wednesday.

Wednesdays suck.

It may be "Hump Day." (This phrase has an entirely different meaning where I went to high school. Going by what we would see in parking lots, Hump Day in Maryville is actually Hump Night, and it’s Fridays.) I may only have two classes. But it is also Add Sheet Day. The day when approximately three million people who look like they just kicked the whiskey bottles under the bushes stand at strategic points all over campus and hand out little yellow books of advertisements and coupons. Mainly for pizza, tanning, and car washes… "Hand out" may not be the proper term. "Force upon us at gunpoint" might work better. Maybe not openly, but I’m almost sure they’re hiding something semi-automatic and repeating under their raincoats. "Sheet?" "No thank you. I’ve already chewed up three this morning." Click. "Sheet?" "Aaah um okay fine."

Anyway I hope it’s a gun they pull out.

I’m sure these people need the money. Their night jobs as crack pushers probably don’t cover the rent or bail. But it’s damned annoying. You can’t tell them no. They push one into your hand even if you’re already holding one in the other. Today, after I finished applying for next semester’s parking permit (I hope someday to be given one for a lot on the same side of campus as my dorm), I was accosted by one who actually ran across the street to give me one. He had this big stupid smile on his face, doubtlessly hoping I wasn’t going to roll the thing up and whack him with it. I wonder if it’s illegal to mace them.

It’s become a game now to see if I can make it all day without ending up with one or eight in the bottom of my backpack. I take entirely different routes to classes Wednesdays. I get five points for each escaped lunatic I successfully avoid. Seven points if I am brave and just ignore their pleas as I walk past. Ten points if I glare at them and they look away. Negative ten if I lose it, scream "No! You aren’t my mommy or daddy!" and run.

There are little No Solicitation signs on the doors here, which is a crock because I’ve had three students after scholarships hit me up for magazine subscriptions this year. So why do they let them torment us so? It’s actually an interesting study in human nature. Almost everyone just gives in, takes one, then throws it out as soon as the pusher is out of sight. (Otherwise, they would chase you and make you take another.) No one wants to say no and disappoint them. I was like that first semester but am getting less and less tolerant. Someday when I’m in a bad mood, hungry, or just generally annoyed with human stupidity, I am going to make a car bomb for the wretched little van that brings them into my little universe.

There must be some kind of scholarship I’d be awarded for that.