Procrastination a costly endeavor

IF YOU FIND yourself taking what I write in this column too seriously, you may be in grave, immediate and very likely, lethal danger. Or not.

I don’t know if you noticed, but this statement does not show a plausible cause-and-effect relationship.

If you actually are in grave, immediate and very likely, lethal danger as you read this, it probably has something more to do with your habit of reading The Collegian upside down while dangling over starved, rabid tigers.

I contrast your Breathairian-esque hobbies. For the record, I prefer dance classes, even though I have to bring in another pair of shoes to the dance floor.

It occurs to me that that’s not an especially safe pastime, but the militant libertarian in me forces me — at hypothetical gunpoint -— to appreciate diversity in race, creed and preferred pastimes.

I demonstrated such monumental stupidity, I might add, during my recent excursion to the Kennel Bookstore. I also demonstrate it by this appropriately awkward segue.

I made the perfectly reasonable and understandable mistake of buying my books in advance. You see, I enjoy putting on the pretense of studious behavior early in the semester or bluntly before it.

Pretending to study is important. It impresses people, and as I am nothing if not a shallow smoke-and-mirrors façade for quaint acquaintanceships and dubious, depthless drudger.

I enjoy this. I also enjoy nigh-meaningless consonance and self-indulgent, pompous, overproduced prose.

Nonetheless, to my folly, I bought my books, new or used, before classes began, careful to not tamper with the shrink wrap or lose the receipt should time come to return a book not needed.

The books were worth about as much at the Kennel as two weeks of my life were worth at my summer job, so I made special care to put my receipt away safely in my wallet.

Once school came around, my professor relieved the class from the strain of purchasing a book at a cost roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product per capita of Myanmar.

I reveled in that I now had a coupon for a $100 bill that would expire on the far-off date of Sept. 11, 2006.

Needless to say, I forgot about this until I cleaned my desk the evening of Sept. 10.

I checked my wallet for the receipt, and, not finding it, lapsed into a cold panic. I was fine once I stopped crying, but still without that metaphorical coupon.

It wasn’t until three classes later that I remembered to check the inside pocket. I ran back before my classes started.

Once I finished up with classes for the day, I moved my lazy carcass to the book return. I ended up with perfect timing.

I recommend to anyone haphazard enough to have read this far that the last day of book return during lunch hour — what with so many University High School kids and equally obnoxious college students around — is the best time to exchange your $100 bill coupon.

In line, I very uncomfortably held in my arms loose papers, three books, my four-year-old MP3 player and my ripped-to-shreds dance shoes.

Like most humans, I have two arms, coupled in my case with degenerately poor coordination.

I must have dropped my books “as if they had been hot” — as contemporary hip-hop artists are wont to say — more often than treaties of Paris.

Absolutely nobody in the 50-some-long line noticed, of course. On a related note, I delude myself easily.

On the plus side, I managed to read every last bit of “The Complete Works of Georges Simenon” while waiting in line. I didn’t know who that was either until I searched for the “world’s most prolific novelist” on Google.

I got through the line eventually, and it was really my own fault for waiting so long, anyway.

The moral of this story? Never put off for Tuesday what you could gladly do today.

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