Not many things on this slightly-green-more-blue-and-brown planet can rightfully say that they have had the privilege of causing the hairs on the back of my neck to jump to attention and salute while a cold sweat to breaks out across my forehead. This reaction is not to be confused with another, more heated response that can also make those shedding hairs sprout up like daisies in the spring; do not swap fear for fury, because I am easily angered while not effortlessly terrified. Aside from the police in Los Angeles circa the 1980s, who must have had a serious distaste for plaid pants and paper flyers, and memories of a childhood spent whirling down the streets of Washington (the D.C. brand, not the state) in an attempt to save my head from meeting the pavement, there has not been much that could send me flying in the opposite direction at a speed that is hopefully faster than whatever the hell is stationed in the original direction. And hey, technically speaking, if an entire police force with swinging batons and a tenacity to introduce said batons to the back of my head and a city’s worth of kicking and snarling youth can cause me to hightail it right on down the concrete, a fair number of things can actually lay claim to the horrified portion of what’s left of my brain cells. But, as that entirely contradicts what I am trying to get around to (eventually), I have decided to turn both police and terrorizing children into two tiny entities that really had no influence on my hair and sweat. Now, just believe me when I repeat that not many creatures and ideas crawling and flowing over this spinning orb have even been handed the opportunity to hear me shriek at the top of my lungs like I am an elephant who has just spotted a dirty little rodent.

A mouse has invaded my current place of resident, where no one is allowed to visit for fear they might notice the new couch I purchased and realize that I was branded by domesticity too many damn years ago to bother to count anymore. Strike that. A decrepit, deformed, defiled rat has taken over my bachelor pad, where no one is permitted entrance because they might trip over a case of beer or any number of bikini bodies or, you know, the rat. At least half of that is true, but I will not guide anyone else’s opinion and state which piece is erroneous. Whatever the case, there is a rodent, and I have been crawling around on my hands and knees in order to find the hole that might have decided to open up for this little house guest. It is too enormous to squeeze its bloated body underneath the door, and I don’t think the termites would have stepped aside and let it scamper on through the space they’ve been gnawing at for years without an unfair fight. The only logical explanation is that the son of a bitch clawed its way through the slits in the receiver of the phone I usually knock off the hook when I’m trying to reach for something that my stout frame doesn’t want me to have.

But hey, don’t look at me like I am absolutely bat crazy. I figured that out a long time ago, and figuring out that a rodent twisted its way into my home via the phone is not at the height of my insanity. This rat has been squirming around with me for nearly two months now, ready to pounce and make my hair turn back to the colors of my youth; what, it already went ten shades of gray, I assume it can only work to the opposite extreme from here. Though, honestly, if the sleepless nights of biting down my fingernails and then my actual skin to the bone when I should have been scratching a pen across ten or twenty pages of paper didn’t help these follicles of mine, I’m sure what will be able to tackle that challenge. Two months worth of these nights have seen my fingernails grow back only to be filed down with my canines again, due to the fact that I could barely gather all of the thoughts I would very much like to say to today’s college graduates to organize them and tie them up in a pretty black bow.

That’s right: Someone – someone actually slightly important, I would imagine – decided that it would be a spectacular idea to have me address the future of tomorrow. Actually, they’re the future of this upcoming Saturday, when I have to take up a microphone that I probably can’t twine around my cold and nearly-dead fingers and wield the words in my head to the best of my blubbering ability. And there’s the rat. I am generally not the sort to feel the flutter of pretty little monarch butterflies in my stomach before any sort of event; I don’t think butterfly mixes very well with my beef and potatoes diet, and, as sad as it is to say, beetle and caterpillar are more suited for my acquired tastes. But right now, I think there might be a polar bear in there, tearing up my digestive tract and bladder and other such important things. While my heart is just like a glacier, and so the little cuddly monster in there should feel right at home, he is clearly not very happy about the situation, and I’ve been feeling it ever since someone agreed and told me that I would be doing my dance on Saturday.

What does one say to the bright and shining faces without an ounce of recognition scribbled across them, when they’re all trying to match the name Rollins to something worthwhile, like a Noble Peace Prize or at least a current chart-topping hit? I do not come equipped with either, but I could tell them how I found one of their classmates passed out in the bushes I just lost my lunch in. I’ve pressed the crumpled pages, complete with my own blood and tears encrusted in the margins, to the nose of It (read: the thing that dares call itself my assistant) roughly two dozen times, and she’s told me about thirty-six times that changing a comma to a semicolon to a comma again doesn’t exactly fix the rest of the shit that is wrong and ridiculous and that respectable young people should not hear. Personally, I thought the dramatic semicolon sounded dignified and educated.

Semicolon completely aside, I don’t want to feed these kids bullshit. Of course, I refrained from telling them all to run to the nearest bomb shelter and hope that no one presses the nearest red button, but I think I utilized the phrase ‘keep your eyes open’ at least one hundred and fifty times. Keep your eyes open to spot the incoming missiles if you all don’t change the way things are run, maybe. I just hope all of that pressure works on them, because I’ve sure felt the crippling pressure (fear, whatever, don’t tell them that) on their behalves with this mouse on my elephant-like shoulders for the last two months. Maybe the message will get across to them if I go change that comma again.

Fucking mouse.