February 21, 2002

Dear Diary,

I was a turtle for three days!

But I’m not going to talk about that. Ya see, I was kind of hoping that nothing would happen over the course of the next two weeks, so that I could reminisce about my admissions process. Boy was that not the case! Not counting the turtle thing, no less than 32 major events occurred! But at the end of my last entry I promised I’d talk about admissions, and by gosh, Sparky Helmersparkz sticks to his promises! That and I can’t remember any of the 32 major events because my short-term memory is temporarily impaired as a result of the sixteenth major event, so my nurse tells me.

As a young senior at Tempe, Arizona High School in Tempe, Arizona, I applied to a bunch of colleges. I applied to X-Ball University (of course!) along with a bunch of safety schools: Northern South Dakota Tech, College University, X-Balt University. But there was only one place I really wanted to go, and that was grand old XBU (X-Ball U, not X-Balt)! So I marched down to my guidance counselor’s office (which was on the bottom floor) and asked for an application. They took it out of this enormous iron case with a radioactive symbol on the cover with a long set of tongs. Which was pretty darn cool!

At first I thought it was the easiest application I’d ever seen, even easier than the one I filled out to work at Insta-Burger! It was just one page and it asked for my name and my address and my grades. They didn’t even verify, they just asked me! I could’ve lied, but that wouldn’t have been very Helmersparkz-ian. So anyway, I filled it out, slapped five stamps on it (just in case!) and sent it on its way to Monster Island.

Well eight days later I got a response from XBU. I was so excited! I cleared a cheering path from my kitchen to my living room (don’t want to break anything!) and a mourning path from my kitchen to my bedroom (don’t want to break anything!) and finally, in the comfort of my linoleum floored kitchen, opened the envelope. It was another application.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it. It was the exact same application as the one I’d filled out and sent to XBU, except it was blank. I looked inside the envelope for a letter or something explaining what I should do, but there was none. I decided to fill this new application and send it to XBU again, because that’s what you do with applications! So I did. Nine days later I got another application in the mail.

I was starting to panic! Seventeen days had passed and not much had gotten done at all, unless you count the apparently useless applications I’d already sent in. I decided to try to clarify things by calling a real-live representative of XBU, since the deadline was coming up. A woman named Margaret took my call! She asked how she could help me so I explained the situation to her. Once I got finished explaining, I heard Margaret scream: Check the box!!! And then she hung up. It was very disconcerting and not so easy on the ears. I called back two or three more times, and the response was the same every time. And it was always Margaret. I could’ve sworn the last representative I contacted was a guy, but his name was Margaret too, apparently. Whatever!

I didn’t see any box. I looked everywhere! I swear! Front, back, sides. Yes, sides. I tried to see if there was any writing on the millionth-of-an-inch-thick sides of the paper. No dice (I think!) So I drew my own box, wrote “Please accept this application and don’t send me another!” next to it and I checked it. Apparently it worked, because I got another application in the mail ten days later. Excuse me, I mean didn’t work.

At this point I was tearing my hair out! So to calm me down, as I filled out the new application, I chowed down on my favorite calm-me-down snack, good old bread and water. It’s great! You can eat them separate, dip the bread in the water, pour the water on the bread- the possibilities are endless! Unfortunately, bread always means perfectly edible crumbs trying to escape their mouthly demise!

As I plucked those crumbs off the paper, I got to one that was giving me a heck of a time to get up! I started to wonder. I whipped out my handy magnifying glass and sure enough, there it was! The box! It was labeled: “Check box if you would like XBU to consider this application and not maliciously torture you.” Well I of course sharpened my HardCore #22 titanium alloy pencil to the finest point possible and ever so carefully checked that box. The rest is history! Well, I had to fight a Man-Hog to get into XBU, but after that the rest is history!

Which leads me to the online application. The fact that applying to XBU is so easy now makes me very...hmmm, I don’t want to say angry. Let me check my thesaurus. Makes me very piqued! I mean sure, I was ticked at the time, but I know now that that application helped me grow as a person! So when I say there will be grave consequences to that online application, I mean it. So it is with a heavy heart that I say, next time, I will not see you at the front of the class. I will see you at the front of civil disobedience and social upheaval. It’s protest time! Yay!

Sincerely,
Gary Helmersparkz