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hand, by some miracle I were to become a surgeon and one of my patients died, I could have a serious problem on my hands. And a butcher isn’t required to take the hypocrite’s--I mean Hippocratic-- oath. Of course, being an animal rights activist, I would never consider becoming a butcher.

  So, having second thoughts about my career plans, I wrote that it might be better for me to start my own business after college. Although I want to make a good living, I also want to leave the world a better place than when I entered it. For that reason, I might want to do useful things such as building igloos for the homeless in Florida and collecting enough fireflies to light up all the major cities in the world.

  Now we come to the most difficult task of all--writing the autobiography. The one that follows, if I may humbly say so, is a masterpiece.

  My name is Tommy Spacenik and I was born at an early age--on a table in the kitchen of my mother’s small trailer, to be more precise. The first person I set eyes upon was the nurse who delivered me and I immediately fell in love with her. Unfortunately, that love was short-lived; for, she cut my umbilical cord and slapped me. I’ve had trouble relating with women ever since.

  My family was poor--so much so that as a child the only toys I had to play with were empty beer bottles and often even those were taken away from me to redeem at the local store.

  Because I had a long, pointed nose and a fat body, the neighborhood bullies made fun of me. Two of their favorite taunts were “Is that your nose or are you eating a banana?” and “Have you speared any fish today, Pinocchio?” Once I went swimming down on Cape Cod and some wise guy hollered, “There she blows!” I darn near got harpooned by a nearby fishing boat.

  One day I happened to look into the mirror and the glass broke. Then and only then, did I realize I had a problem. With tears streaming down my cheeks I ran to my mother for sympathy. Reluctantly, she told me that as a young woman she had been abducted by aliens, taken aboard a flying saucer, and whisked off to a distant planet--no, not Krypton, but Palindromeda. Its inhabitants are called Palindromedists and my mother fell in love with one of them--E. T’s uncle to be exact--whose name was A B C D E F G…or Alpha Bet for short. On that planet, it seems that the more letters one has in his or her name, the more important he or she is. So, as you can see my father, A B C D E F G… was a very important man--important because he was the planet’s leading authority on Palindromese, the language of the Palindromedists. It’s a unique and difficult language to learn because, except for the names of important people, all its words read the same backwards as forwards. Some examples of such words--palindromes as they’re called are--kayak and civic. In that language, I am often affectionately referred to as Kook.

  Although my mother and he got married, she soon got homesick and asked him to go back to Earth with her. Since he loved his job and was working on a bookoob--their word for a dictionary--he was reluctant to do so. For a while he thought about commuting to work but the distance from Earth to Palindromeda was too great. So, my mother returned to Earth alone. He remained deeply in love with her and, shortly after my birth, he and his flying saucer were spotted, swooping up and down over the neighborhood and making heart-shaped crop circles in the fields around our trailer. I didn’t realize it then but this is the way aliens tell earthlings they love them. My mother was mad--I mean, of course, that she was still mad about my father, Alpha Bet--but because she wasn’t good in foreign languages and couldn't speak Palindromese, she began communicating with him via mental telepathy.

  One stormy night his saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. Fortunately, he survived and somehow made his way to California. He later became governor there--but that's another story which I won’t bore you with right now. Upon hearing about the crash, mother, in a panic, jumped into her car and headed out West to look for him. Along the way she took a wrong turn and ended up in Death Valley where she hit an armadillo and veered off the road, landing in a ditch. Parched and thirsty, she decided to drain the water out of the radiator. Unfortunately, what she thought was water turned out to be engine coolant and that was the end of her.

  Distraught over her death, my grades in high school plummeted--even lower than before if you can believe it. Realizing I wasn’t ready for college, I joined the Army and served in the Persian Gulf War. Unfortunately I was hit in the head with a marshmallow during a scuffle in the mess hall and suffered another concussion. As a result I was given a medical discharge.

  After my discharge, haunted by the nurse’s earlier rejection of me, I began spending time in coffee shops, trying to find “my true love” among the waitresses. All in vain.

  Still depressed over my mother’s death and despondent about my inability to find “the right woman,” I decided to end it all. I had spent two weeks at the Grand Canyon the previous year and at first thought about going there and jumping off one of the cliffs. But because of my fear of heights, I chose instead to drown myself in my neighbor’s swimming pool. Unfortunately, the night I dove into the pool, there was no water in it. This third head injury was a serious one. So much so I had to undergo surgery to relieve a clot in my brain. The surgeon, who operated on me, was the blind one I told you about earlier and, unfortunately, he removed my appendix by mistake.

  My head injury, however, turned out to be a blessing in disguise; for, overnight I became a voracious reader, devouring every book I could get my hands on--particularly when I was hungry. I also grew more intellectually curious, intent upon solving some of life’s most profound questions. So it was I began counting the number of grains of sand in an hour glass, listening for the sound of the sun, and trying to see the wind.

  I also found myself taking a great interest in music--classical rock in particular. I loved to listen to the music of Julius Caesar and His Legions--particularly their hit song, Three Loves Have I--Cornelia, Pompeia, and Cleopatra. Looking for my True Love by Diogenes and the Stoics was another one of my favorites.

  So let me end this autobiography by asking, begging, and beseeching you to ignore my high-school transcript and SAT scores; for, as I’m sure you can tell, I’ve since matured and grown as a person. I’m now ready, willing, and able to meet the rigors of higher education. My fate now rests in your hands.

  Now let’s take a minute and analyze my autobiographical essay.

  Notice that I began by emphasizing my humble beginnings. I did this on purpose so as to tug at the hearts strings of the admissions committee and, by so doing, gain their sympathy. I then wanted them to know the depth of poverty into which I was born and that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t pull myself up by my bootstraps because I couldn't afford to buy the boots.

  I let them know that my father was an alien because I knew that PU gave preference to candidates from other geographical areas within the United States and from foreign countries. And the planet Palindromeda, where I was conceived, was about as far and foreign as one can get. Since I considered myself a member of a small minority--so small I may be the only living member of that race--I was hoping that I might qualify for admission under one of their special programs

  In a nutshell everything I wrote on the application helped me to plead my case and tell the admissions committee where I was coming from--outer space obviously. Apparently, it worked; for, I was admitted under the Endangered Species Act.

  Right this moment, as I’m sure you can see, I’m brimming with self-confidence and my spirits are soaring--soaring higher even than Palindromeda, that distant planet where I was conceived.

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