I’m sure you’ve noticed me around the halls. I know you’re curious. I am, too. You’re funny, and charming, and you’re smart (which is how I know we’ll really click). You have a lot of fantastic qualities you could bring, if you were interested, to someone like me: Fiction Fanatix, the MSU bimonthly student book club.

I won’t hold no truck with any of this rude bunch, these kids today. No, I may not keep up with technology or current events or the supreme edicts of the inhuman god-emperors, but I stand by the idea that people of my generation were just plain more courteous, and had a modicum of common sense, to boot, which you won’t find one whit of in today’s crowd, I’ll have you know.

Mr. Stevenson must have had a first name, but, if so, his teachers didn’t know it. “Is that so, Stevenson?” they inquired. “Speak up, Stevenson, so that the whole class can hear you.” Mr. Stevenson’s parents probably knew his first name at one point, but may have forgotten. His friends didn’t know it, for the same reason that unicorns don’t know the capital of North Dakota.

There is a hum and my phone skitters an inch or so across the table, bumping into a pastel yellow beachhouse perched on wooden stilts above a vista of scenic rolling dunes.

It’s Marc, asking if I’m down for brunch tomorrow with his cousin who’s in town for a music festival.

With a sigh, I text back to say I can’t afford to keep going to brunch in the middle of the week, by means of the waffle, dollar sign, and sad face emojis

I know I’m going to catch a lot of flak for this, but I don’t care, because PEOPLE DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH, and I’m not going to CENSOR MYSELF just because there are some things that THEY don’t want us thinking!