This week, my column has no real point. (What else is new, right?) I just wanted to clear that up before you spend your time reading for one in vain. I must also admit that I am not a journalist. If anything, I’m just a writer (of the English major variety) who has managed to sneak into the Daily.

The following is just a short collection of stories about my friends. I’m not trying to assert that I think my friends and I are any cooler than you and your friends. (Unless you’re one of my friends, then that is exactly what I’m asserting, ’cause you guys are sure special. Thanks for the Valentine’s rose, by the way.)

I just hope that you will find these stories diverting. I get a kick out of them.

1) One Friday night I was catching a ride with a friend out to the stadium to get my car. When we got there, my car wouldn’t start. Apparently, the fuel line had frozen. My friend told me I should have put some Heet in to prevent this.

I had been having a pretty bad day, and my stupid dead car topped it off. I was feeling a little despondent, so I took advantage of the ride back to the dorm to whine to my sweet, understanding friend about all my problems, the lack of Heet among them. I was close to tears when he dumped me out at our dorm to go shopping with some of his guy friends. I went to my room.

Later that night, next to my door, I found a bottle of Heet (with a little post-it note from my friend) waiting for me. I was touched.

2) One night, a bunch of us were hanging out in my friend Luke’s room. I was standing on the back of his couch helping him hang Christmas lights from the ceiling. Steve, who had just decided he was going to join ISU’s boxing club, was standing in the middle of the room excitedly looking up the coach’s name in the faculty phone book.

Finished with the lights, I was preparing to make my descent when Luke offered his hand in assistance. He grabbed my hand and yanked to “help” me down. (I should interject that Luke routinely shows little or no regard for my personal safety when goofing around.) I shot off the back of the couch and crashed to the floor, avoiding landing on Steve only because he stepped back to allow me clearance.

After yelling at Luke, I asked Steve why he had not at least attempted to catch me.

“I didn’t want to lose my place,” he said, innocently holding up the phone book.

3) The other night some friends and I went on a drive in the country. It was one of those (rare) nights when I can’t go to bed, but have to be outside doing something, even if it’s just walking or driving around. My friend Katie and I felt the same way, so when the others wanted to head back to town, we decided we were going to get out of the car and walk.

We were met with a chorus of loud, vehement protests from all the males present. “Do you know how far we are from home? It’s midnight, are you crazy? Do you want to get kidnapped? Do you realize if you get murdered, that we’ll all be arrested for it?”

A brief argument ensued about the exact distance to town, the ratio of urban-prowling kidnappers to rural ones and the likelihood that, in the dark, passing marauders would take us as desirable victims. One of the guys tried to explain that it would be safe for him to walk home because he was big and unattractive. We weren’t convinced.

Katie and I decided we would have to settle for walking from the stadium (after parking the car) to Subway for cookies. We were actually assaulted on the way. Some guys drove by in a car, shot at us with a water gun and flipped us off. But I also must point out that the only one to be doused was our guy friend who was still with us.

Katie and I decided that he was too small and cute to walk home by himself. Who knows what could’ve happened if we hadn’t been there to protect him?

4) A few friends and I have a lecture together and our professor, Phil, is a brilliant, funny man whom we all love. But we’re always regrettably disrespectful in class because we all have a nasty habit of talking and goofing around. (That’s why you shouldn’t take classes with your friends.) I imagine that all of the other students must hate us because we sit in the back of the lecture hall where they can undoubtedly hear us very well.

Tuesday, one of my friends got up to go get a drink right after Phil turned out the lights to show us something on the projector. She tripped going down the stairs and crashed to the floor on the landing in front of the door.

Everyone turned to look, snickering. In the back row we stared in a state somewhere between horror and hilarity as she quickly collected herself and hurried into the hall.

“If you stay in your seat, you’re usually pretty safe,” Phil quipped, “although I’ve been told that these chairs are rather difficult to sit in.”

Great, it’s not enough that we always talk during class, but now one of us had to go and fall down the stairs and thoroughly disrupt the lecture.

My friends, ladies and gentlemen. Please give them a round of applause.

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Juli Hisel is an undeclared sophomore from Richland.