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Chapter 12
Every Monday I emailed my column to The Mirror’s Gmail account at about 5 p.m. I attached a Word Document and also included the text within the body of the email. I figured I would make it as easy as possible for whoever was responsible for transferring the column from my email to the paper. Without fail, two days later my work would appear slightly edited both online and in print. On this particular Monday, for the first time all year, I also included a short message.
I asked that my column (the one word) be printed in the top left corner of the space allotted and for the rest to remain blank. I thought it would look hysterical if my one word answer stood side by side with Jackie’s 400 word column. Sadly, this did not come to fruition. The Mirror’s staff ultimately decided to put our columns in conversation bubbles in order to avoid the empty space, but let’s just say that it took a lot for that to happen.
Within an hour after I sent the aforementioned email I got a phone call from Steph. At first she seemed like she was in good spirits about what I had sent in. She even admitted that she laughed when she first saw it. Despite the initial tacit approval Steph eventually boldly stated that I would have to write a full length response. I think that as the editor she started freaking out about the white space and figured it was time to put her foot down. I did my best to defend my position by arguing that not only was I polite enough to let Jackie pick the topic, but I also adequately answered the prompt. She quickly got angry and told me that if I wanted to continue writing the He Said column every week then I would have to expand my article to roughly 400 words by 4 o’clock the next day.
If Steph didn’t have the authority to strip me of my column there is no way that I would have caved and written a full length response, but I had become infatuated with my role with the paper and I didn’t want to lose it. That said, I still wasn’t going to back down without a fight, so before I went to bed that night I sat down to meet her demands, so to speak. It was then that I remembered that Jackie had edited the page where our columns appeared the week before. I knew this because her name, preceded by the words “Edited by”, was printed on the top left corner of the page where our columns appeared. I asked her about it and she said that she just wanted to get some experience in editing so that she could put it on her resume, but I saw it as an opportunity to make a point.
My expanded column looked like this:
Can Guys and Girls Ever Just Be Friends?
In a word, no. Despite my best efforts to get only that word, “no” printed with nothing but remaining white space, The Mirror’s editorial staff of all women who all think that I am ‘friends’ with them would not budge. It is a simple question and I provided a simple answer. This half-hearted attempt to lengthen what would have been a perfect response will only harm my point.
Despite initially laughing, my editors called my one word submission a cop out. Really? A cop out would been if I glorified women and spoke about how great it is to be “friends” with them. What I did was not a cop out. It was a humorous, thought provoking response to an easy question. Guys would have understood completely and girls would have been left wondering why it only took one word to answer what on the surface seems like a complex issue. Sure there would have been that small contingent that would have just written me off as a jerk, but they are entitled to their opinion just like I am.
One member of the editorial staff wanted to know the rationale behind the response. She had an idea of what it meant, but she wasn’t sure, so let me explain.
Believe it or not, just the word “no” would have spoken volumes. If it was printed the way it should have been it would have illustrated the stark contrast in the way that males and females think. A simple one word response by a male juxtaposed with a lengthy, well thought out, 400 word female opinion would have shown that guys are much simpler than girls.
It also would have demonstrated the way that men and women deal with relational issues. Men think logically while women tend to reason in a more complex manner. Perhaps it even would have served as a reminder in the back of a girl’s mind the next time she was in an argument with a guy. At least every guy would have hoped so.
The fact remains. Guys and girls cannot just be friends. A girl might think she is friends with a guy, but more often than not that guy just wants to get in her pants (or her roommate’s).
Speaking of people that I am not friends with, last week’s page was edited by Jackie? What? Would it not only be fair to let me edit this week? If so, my one word response would have proudly stood surrounded by blank white space that my editors are so afraid of.
I was pissed that Steph wouldn’t print my one word response, so I waited until 3:59 to send my expanded column in. In the back of my mind I was hoping that if I waited long enough they would be forced to just print my original column.
Coincidentally my sports talk radio show aired on Tuesdays from 4-6 that semester (afternoon drive- what up?), so I was in the studio at the time that Steph and her fellow editors got my revised copy. If you’ll remember the radio station was tucked underneath a staircase on the ground floor of the Barone Campus Ceneter and right next door to The Mirror’s office. With me in the studio that day were two of my regular guests; Glancy and another friend from my floor freshman year named John Z.
John Z not only lived with my freshman year radio co-host Robby, but he also went to high school with him in Westchester, New York. He was about six feet tall and had cropped black hair and a mulatto like complexion. He’s of Italian descent, but was one of those kids that easily could have passed for just about any ethnicity imaginable. Black, Italian, Hawaiian, Mexican, Samoan. You name it. This may have contributed to his remarkable ability to become friends with virtually every clique in our class. He shared my passion for sports and became one of my closest friends after graduation. He also played on a state championship basketball team in high school and wasn’t shy about bringing it up even though he rode the bench.
During our first segment I couldn’t help but notice a female peering in through the glass wall of the studio for an extended period of time. After asking my guests what could only have been an incredibly intelligent sports question about the week that was I looked over and who did I see but Steph. She was staring a hole through me with an unprecedented conviction. I swear, I’ve never seen someone look so angry in my life. Naturally both of her middle fingers were prominently extended and she held her statuesque form for nearly 10 seconds before storming back to The Mirror’s office confident that she had sufficiently said, “Fuck you,” without having actually said it.
I wouldn’t say I was stunned. I guess I was more alarmed if anything. I honestly didn’t think that my 400 word retort, if you will, would upset her so much. Quite frankly1 I was amused by the entire charade. I quickly tossed to a commercial break (not that anyone was really listening) and tried to regroup.
In the break Glancy and John Z couldn’t figure out what just happened. They were just laughing uncontrollably. I assume that they must have just thought it was some random girl who hated my guts for all of the things I had previously written. Either way, I told them that it was my editor and that I would explain the rest on the air.
Once we came back from commercial2 Glancy and John Z quickly recapped how a girl had just come by the studio, given me the evil eye, and flipped me the double bird. After explaining how I was basically told that I would have to go along with whatever topic Jackie picked for our columns that week I proceeded to offer the prompt to the both of them.
“What was her topic?” Glancy asked eagerly.
“Her topic was this,” I said, “Can guys and girls ever just be friends?
Almost immediately, “No,” said Glancy.
John Z without missing a beat, “Nooo way!”
Point proven I thought. We then went on to discuss how none of us were actually friends with any girls3. Basically there were girls that we wanted to sleep with and girls that we thought could help us sleep with their friends.
I did not speak to Steph or any of my other female editors for the rest of the week, so I guess they just decided that it wasn’t worth it to have one of their writers openly criticize them in their own paper. And thus the conversation bubble idea was put in place.
Naturally I considered this to be a victory for my methodology. It didn’t hurt that I got nothing but enthusiastic praise in the comments section of the online publication. One former editor of the paper even dropped the Shakespeare line, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Although I was riding high I suddenly came to a sad realization. The first semester of my senior year was essentially over. Jackie and I only had one more column to write before Winter Break. Naturally we saw it as an obvious opportunity to write about Christmas. After all, Fairfield is a Jesuit institution.
With such a broad topic I resorted back to an old writing habit of mine; rhyming couplets. In high school I took a class called Current Affairs/Public Speaking (which we affectionately called CAPS) and about 90% of my speeches were written in rhyming couplets. I don’t know if I thought I was good at it or what (I definitely wasn’t), but for some reason the notion just intrigued me. I can say that even though I wrote in rhyming couplets I had no aspirations of becoming a rapper. It had been four years since I had constructed anything in this tried and true form, but it was like riding a bike. Looking back I cringe at how awful some of the lines and rhymes are, but I also see a few that are mildly impressive.
The Mirror on December 19th, 2007:
Christmas
After 11 months of waiting, the Christmas season is finally here,
So it’s time to be nice to the people we can’t stand all year.
We tell teachers how much we’ve learned and the strides that we’ve made,
All in the hopes that they’ll give us a better grade,
After all it’s finals week and most of us are stressed,
But our grades need to leave our parents impressed.
Because based on what they believe,
Will influence the kinds of gifts we’ll receive.
Buying gifts for our parents and siblings might be the worst,
It’s definitely an area where I’m not well versed,
This year I’m going to keep it as simple as I can,
So buying them all Fairfield t-shirts is my plan.
College students, though, are easy to please,
Here’s the short list, just booze and trees,
We long for other things, but those are the essentials,
Although we’d also like an internship to boost our credentials
We have no money so we are forced to beg,
We have to pay for Spring Break, bills, and the next keg,
Hopefully Santa will bring us other things like new clothes,
As well as DVD’s of our favorite TV shows,
Like I said there are things we want and others we need,
And here’s a quick want list that in getting I hope to succeed.
What I really want is some rum in my eggnog,
Or maybe a Lexington Steele4 sized hog,
I could also use a new suit so that I look dapper,
As well as a fresh 12 pack of those golden wrappers,
Maybe some muscles so I look like a hunk,
Or another semester in the bottom bunk5.
The holiday season is a time to unwind,
A much needed break from the daily grind,
We go to parties to celebrate our time away from it all,
But make a stumbling attempt to make it to the bar for last call,
Over break you’ll get sick of seeing your mother,
So make sure you get to see your significant other,
And when you get her underneath that mistletoe,
Drop your pants as far as they can go,
Although we have been having lots of fun,
We now realize that half of the school year is done,
For us seniors we have one semester left and our degrees to get,
So let’s live it up and make it the best one yet.
1 Trademark. Stephen A. Smith↩
2 We ran some standard PSAs, but I also made a few commercials of my own. Most featured clips from previous shows, but one contained play-by-play highlights from a guard on the women’s basketball team and was set to the song “Got My Mind Set On You” by George Harrison. This is easily the creepiest thing that I’ve ever done. By the way, she was definitely cute, but almost certainly a lesbian.↩
3 Ironically, Jackie and I remained very close friends for years after college. That was until I starting posting these chapters on the internet.↩
4 An African American pornstar known for his enormous genitalia. By the way, I can’t handle black guys nailing white chicks in my porn. Does that make me a racist? I sure hope not. If it’s any consolation I routinely fall in love with black strippers.↩
5 Tim and I shared a bunk bed in out tiny bedroom. I had the bottom bunk for the first semester and then we switched for the second semester. Needless to say, but I played a lot of road games in the Spring.↩
2 comments:
i just lost sleep all week from this line
"It's hard to believe, but we are at least halfway done (I'm not sure how many more chapters I'm going to write..."
Say it ain't so stan man...keep it going!
also to this day every time i hear that song i think of that radio commercial!
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