What About Bob?

Author: Bob Wainwright Staff Writer

At this particular moment in time, I highly doubt my life could be much worse. And yet, despite my immense fury over my current situation, I cannot help but be at least a tiny bit amused over what I have managed to do. For all express purposes, I should not be writing a column right now.

Not at all. What I should be doing, however, is working on the 14-page final paper on Australia and its convict origins that is due tomorrow morning.

If you could see me now, I have no doubt that you would be unable to tell what's wrong. After all, I am in a university computer lab. I am sitting at a computer. And quite obviously, the computer is working. But herein lies the problem. The bag to my left, while identical to mine in every aspect (save the Atlanta Braves emblem on one of the straps), is actually my roommate's. Consequently I have neither the books nor the disk necessary to write the paper.

"But Bobby," you ask me, "Why don't you just return home, collect your backpack, return to the computer lab and then start your paper, instead of boring me with another one of your columns?"

To which I reply, "I can't go home. In order to leave, I must have a student card. The card I used to get in was taken by one of my roommates shortly after he let me in. Since I had been planning on spending the night, I told him I would not need it. After all, what better incentive to finish a paper than placing oneself in the least used computer lab on campus with absolutely no way to get out. And no Internet access either!"

So here I am, in this penal colony of a country, with nothing to help me write my final paper except a Maxim magazine, a few books on industrial economics, some worn gym shorts and a photo of my roommate's girlfriend…or is that his mom?

Economics books. Hmmm. If only I were an economics major, then this would never have happened in the first place. And if it had happened, I would still have had the right books to write a paper. And it would probably have been an important paper too, instead of something absurd like why Australia tried to hide its convict past for so long. Seriously people, this is the type of paper that really belongs in Duh? Magazine, right alongside such groundbreaking news as "prolonged exposure to the sun linked to skin cancer" and "one man's 10-year quest for gold underneath rainbows ends in failure."

Allow me to ask you, what would you do if your country had been settled by thousands of people who'd rather pick pockets for a living than get a job? Do whatever you could to hide the truth? Bingo! We have a winner!

But, of course, in Australian Studies, the obvious is not acceptable. Instead, I have to come up with some sentence like, "The depraved character of the convicts was rarely questioned by the middle class reading public in 19th century Britain or Australia, and convict ancestry was a point of shame not pride."

But what I'd really like to say is, "Why on earth did you academics insist on making your convict origins an issue!? I mean, for gosh sake, you downplayed it so well for so long!

"You already had everybody concentrating on how poorly you treated the Aboriginies. Nobody would have remembered that you sprung from the scum of 18th century British society if you hadn't brought it to their attention!"

You have to hand it to Australians though. It certainly wasn't easy starting a country as big as Australia with England breathing down the convicts necks, forcing them to do manual labor every morning, five days a week. But they persevered, shed the yoke of England and have done just fine on their own.

Oops, I forgot. Australia still maintains ties with the British throne. Maybe that's why spell check wanted to change manual labor to labour.

But that's beside the point. Australia has shed its convict past in becoming one of the most law abiding nations in the world. Oh, wait a second. How many times has my house been robbed since I've been here? Three times?

I'm sorry; I don't know why I'm so riled up against Australia. I'm probably just homesick. It's just that if I hear one more wisecrack about how absurd it is that I live in a place as cold as Vermont…I mean, does it ever occur to these people that I find their constant 80-degree cloudless days monotonous? Does it!?

Settle down, Bobby. Settle down. You know, this whole mess I've ended up in is quite ironic, isn't it? The only thing keeping me from writing a paper on Australia, the gigantic jail, is the fact that I myself am locked in a room, with no way out except the phone on my right...

Hey, why didn't I think of that before?