Dear Student,

I regret to inform you I cannot accept your homework. I am aware it is due today, but I don’t think you clearly grasp the purpose of homework. Allow me to explain it more fully to you.

Homework is defined as a set of tasks or assignments that are to be completed outside of class. Pay attention to the phrases outside of class and the word home in homework.

Breathe. You’ve been jolted. Your heart palpitations and sudden flashbacks to the worst six years of your life are perfectly appropriate responses. After all, you’ve just received a class reunion invitation from a peer whose personality rivaled that of the clown called ‘It.’

Step away from the e-vite. Whether or not this is the first recorded attempt at an elementary school reunion since the founding of the Boston Latin School is irrelevant.

My wife Carol said something really sweet and profound to me the other day. I wish I’d muted the TV long enough to catch it all.

Carol starts every day by saying, “I love you.” I respond by asking her who she’s on the phone with.

Everything is your fault. If you were a good girl, you wouldn’t have gotten into that car accident.

You’re life is accompanied by a swelling musical score that sounds like classical music, but it’s not. It’s really, really not.

I lie back on the table, naked, draped in paper, awaiting my exam. I assume the position, heels in stirrups, exposing my privates to an air conditioned gust. Time crawls by and I’m thinking, “Why didn’t they let me read magazines in the lobby where the light’s so much more flattering?” I hate being alone in this room so prone to ruminating.

My ten year try at true love had turned loveless two years before. Then, I’d rushed into a frantic romance, which ended soon as the guy recognized it as a rebound. This was followed by the realization that my last period had put the period on my menses, and probably put the period on men. Menopause? More like Men-o-stop. My allotment of orgasms had apparently expired with my eggs.