(Now that I have your attention, I might as well tell you why I just did that. In order to save this newspaper from caving under pressure, I have decided to adopt more professional journalistic techniques. I have checked and rechecked this to make sure there are no grammmatical errors such as spelling mistakes, incorrect; punctuation, words getting left out, and stuff like. I am also confining myself to the English language. The most important innovation, of course, is my new use of beginning sentences which really stand up and grab you. Even if they aren’t explicitly connected to the actual paragraph, you’re encouraged to keep reading.)

Life is like a bag of Skittles™! Some teachers would say that I’m a last-minute person. I don’t know how they could say something like that. Probably they thought about saying it and then moved their mouths in a certain way while exhaling. It happens.

The eastern coast of South America faintly resembles a human ear. All right, sometimes I am a last-minute person. But teachers need to start giving credit for extenuating circumestances. Take that research paper rough draft that was due yesterday. I waited until the night before on purpose, of course, merely out of reverence for custom, and then it totally slipped my mind. That much, I admit, was my fault. But not the rest.

Some scientists suggest that Mount Rushmore is actually a natural phenomenon! I was watching an old Mork and Mindy film fest on the Discovery Channel (please remember that this is fictional), and at a commercial break I went for some popcorn. The popcorn was down in my room, along with my other staples of life—-you know, my bed, coffee-flavored pop-tarts, clothes, paper clips, and my autographed copy of The Collected Works of Anonymous. While there, I tripped over a stack of index cards approximately three feet high (after I knocked it over) that consisted entirely of notes for my research paper. Ouch. I remembered everything. And I only had seven hours and seventeen minutes left before second bell.

Spring is no longer considered a season of the year. By the time I was settled in and ready to work, with plenty of paper, all my sources, pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, several tubes of oil-based fingerpaint, all my notes, and my handy dandy Swiss Army™ Pocket Knife (in case I needed it), my desk clock was blocked by several thick books, so I didn’t know that I only had four hours and thirty-two minutes left. To be honest, I’m not sure how I know that now. However, just when I was finally about to get started, someone knocked at the door.

Banana. Everyone else was so involved with Mork and Mindy that I had to answer the door. It was a UPS guy. I was slightly surprised to get a package after three o’clock in the morning. Nevertheless, we chatted about taxes, UPS politics, and what people really put into chicken soup these days, I took the package, and he got on his gold-plated unicycle and left. It was all pretty weird, especially talking taxes with a UPS guy. I left the package at the top of the stairs so I wouldn’t get distracted; back in my room, I switched CDs, changed the channel, and got back to work.

Did you know that the distance between New York and Honolulu is so great that if you took 1,627 yellow Volkswagen bugs and stacked them one on top of each other, they would fall over? It was awhile before I suddenly realized that the that the draft had to be double spaced. Disaster! I was going to have to retype the whole thing! I saved some time by leaving the first sentence intact, but I was still way behind schedule when I heard another knock at the door.

Life actually isn’t very much like a bag of Skittles™ at all. When the door opened, I saw a beautiful woman with long auburn hair. She was across the street talking to somebody else. The person who had knocked at the door was a fat little old woman selling Girl Scout cookies. At four o’clock in the morning. I bought a Girl Scout cookie, handed her back the rest of the box, and decided to ask her neither why she wore an Oxford shirt backwards, buttoned down her back, nor why she sold Girl Scout cookies at her age. Later I found out that it was National Koala Bear Week, and that she wore her shirt backwards to protest the recent slayings of several koala bears who had, tragically, gotten politically involved in Red China. I also found out that she sold Girl Scout Cookies at her age because there wasn’t really anything she could do to change how old she was.

HI, I LIKE YOU—-READ THIS PARAGRAPH!! Back in my bedroom, I was finally beginning to get a little nervous about handing in my draft on time. I was getting that early morning I’ve-pumped-enough-caffeine-into-my-body-to-kill-several-large-horses look. It became hard to focus. I couldn’t figure out how to rewind the CD ("Favorite TV Themes from the Twenties"), and, in the process of looking through the closet for the instruction manual, I came across an old friend. Barney Tyler. I had invited him over to spend the night when we were in third grade. Apparently, he was still there. My closet is kind of messy, and he still hadn’t found his left shoe. I promised to help him find it in the morning; just then, I was busy with a research paper. Although he didn’t know what a research paper was, he was very understanding, and he wanted to know if he could spend the night. This would be a great place to go to a new paragraph, but, unfortunately, I can’t think of any more cool opening sentences, so we’re going to have to stay in this paragraph until I do. Otherwise, you might stop reading. About this time, I suddenly realized that the draft had to be 1200 words, and that, thanks to the stupid double-space rule, I only had about fifty. It was also after eight o’clock. I wondered if my teacher would notice if I just copied from A Tale of Two Cities. It was just a rough draft, after all, and, with any luck, she probably hadn’t heard of the book. Given the time constraint, I decided that Xerox™ was the way to go, so I photocopied the first fifteen pages of A Tale of Two Cities (complete with illustrations) and scratched out the first sentence (which I thought was kind of dumb and didn’t make sense anyway) to throw her off the track. Breathing a huge sigh of relief, I put the pages in a report cover (teachers go crazy for that kind of thing), moved the books, and looked at the clock. I had some five minutes left to shower, get dressed, get in the car, and run through the car wash (it definitely needed it) in order to get to school on time for second period English twelve. I don’t normally like to do this kind of thing, but I needed the time, so I set the clock back an hour or so, promising myself to set it back to normal later. Later, as I was leaving the house, I suddenly noticed the package. I had plenty of time, so I stopped and open it. There was a huge explosion, and I realized in shock that the box had an atomic bomb inside it. There was also a threatening note inside the box, explaining everything. Unfortunately, it blew up too. Fortunately, I had been pointing the box away from my face, so I was okay, but the same couldn’t be said for my yard and my car, which were completely annihilated. It all seemed a bit strange, but I figured that it was just another attempt to make me late for class. It worked. I lost five points, and the teacher gave me a funny look after she glanced at my paper. Maybe leaving the illustrations in was a bad move. Anyhow, I hope it’s now obvious that the whole thing wasn’t my fault. You see that, I presume. What? Well, either way, it was still a cool article, especially with those new nifty paragraph openers.

After all, here you are.