I kind of feel like it's the end of an affair. Every week I come to see you. For five minutes, you laugh, you look puzzled, you tell me it was OK and I go away again. Sometimes you see me on the street and you do a double take, but usually we don't speak. I'm just your layover in between the front page and the crossword. Well now the affair is over. I'm not going to be the other woman anymore. You'll have to be with someone else. I'd like to at least go out with a bang … and a good column idea.
For column ideas I usually look to my friends. But not all of their ideas are that great.
Hey, can you use half your column inches to advertise my gig?\ or, ""Why don't you write about me? I'm funny!""
I'd like to take this opportunity to follow up on all of these ideas. I always told my friends the topics below could never fly on their own, and now I get to prove it. Plus, you have to know what doesn't work to find what does.
First up is this little tidbit from my buddy Troy. In September 2005, Troy told me his brilliant idea for a column about away messages. Away messages are often fodder for campus columnists, but he had a new angle.
On the weekends when people go out, their away messages usually read something like, ""You can find me in da club,"" or "" Getting drunk."" It is Troy's belief that if this away message is still up anytime after noon the next day, you know that person had a good night. He even thought of a headline for the column: ""It was a good night."" It's snappy and to the point, but a little too snappy. I couldn't make that column any longer if I tried. Scratch that.
Don, one of my roommates from last year, would say funny things and then alert me to that fact to see if it warranted his name in print. Most of the time it didn't.
""Hey Erin, did you hear that joke I just had about this show we're watching? Was that funny? Want me to get a notebook or something?""
His efforts were not in vain though. Little did he know his least funny quotation would find its way into the hands of 10,000 people.
My other friends and roommates have suggested I just ignore a column idea completely and just put their names in the paper.
""Can't you just give me a shout out or something?""
Who are you people? Jay-Z? This is not my demo tape, it's a newspaper column. Writing your name just for the sake of writing your name is ridiculous, and I think my friends Becky, Cristi, Sarah, Genell and Amber would all agree.
So without an idea and without any fanfare, I'm going to walk out of your life. Our weekday tryst is over. No more late night calls asking me to come over, no more awkward glances on the street. You can go back to your full-time girl, ShoutOuts, and I can try to go back to a normal life. It will be weird not seeing you every week, but it would be more detrimental to stay in this one-sided relationship. We knew it couldn't last, right? Let's make this a clean break. I'll think of you fondly every spring, or whenever I get newsprint on my hands.
This is Erin's last column. Please e-mail tearful goodbyes to erincanty8285@hotmail.com.
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