Just when I thought I’d had enough of this whole, back-to-school thing, off I go once more—this time I’m speaking to a bunch of kids at Conrad High School.

It’s a career-fair sort of deal, which is always fraught with danger as I’m liable to send the entire class to the nurse’s station having bored them into a collective coma. The problem, of course, is that in my current vocation, I neither blow things up, cut things open, nor stitch them back up again. You’d think that being a jet-setting novelist (we’re talking coach, don’t get too excited) would wow them, but a tax attorney discussing the fundamentals of the 1040ez probably elicits fewer yawns.

Just once I’d like to show up wearing a dark suit, with a suspicious-looking briefcase and tell the entire class that, “I kill people for a living, and get paid a handsome sum to do it”. Of course, I only kill bad people who obviously have it coming—staring at the quaking math teacher in the corner. Then I’d show them how to make Semtex using Drain-O, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, and Pop Rocks, imploring the kids to place the explosives under the gas tank, and not the driver’s side seat. Finally my phone would ring and I’d rush off saying, “I love my work.”

*Sigh*

Instead, I’ll tell them about sitting at a keyboard all day, typing things like this…