To paraphrase the words of famed philosopher and theologian Eric Cartman, Ric Flair gave me pink-eye.

Of course, I have no way to substantiate this. I haven't had any actual physical contact with Ric Flair, unless he's been coming into my room while I sleep and rubbing his eyes with my sleep-deadened hands, giggling to himself all the while. All I know is, I was watching him on TV one night, and the next thing I knew, I had pink-eye. Seems like a solid case to me.

For those of you who don't know Ric Flair, he is a WCW wrestler, and I am madly in love with him. But that's besides the point. Unless of course you happen to know him, or know where he lives, or happen to have a map of the interior of his house. Not that I intend to stalk him or anything. Just for sentimental value. No stalking here.

The point is, I've got pink-eye, and I've had it for the last three weeks. There's really nothing to the disease; you get it, and your eye turns pink. The name is pretty self explanatory. Having had pink-eye approximately 837,562 times since 1995, when I began shelving books in the children's section of the Aurora Memorial Library (lesson learned: never touch anything that has been touched by little kids, unless you want some portion of your body to turn pink), I know all too well that a normal case of pink-eye, if treated properly, should not last this long.

My theory is that the editors wanted so desperately for me to write a column about pink-eye that they keep reinfecting me, probably through airborne particles shuttled through the ventilation system in the Collegian office. I was wondering why they were always wearing those goggles.

As I've mentioned, I am quite the veteran of pink-eye; I'm not very proud to say that once I had it so bad, I had to wear an eye patch for three days. Believe me, my high school popularity soared that week. It was a low matched only by the week in the sixth grade that inexplicably everyone decided to start calling me Afro Bathrobe Queen of 1990.

Really the only drawback to having pink-eye, aside from the obvious stigma of having no one want to touch your hand or anything that has been touched by you for three years after the pink-eye has cleared up for fear of catching it, is the fact that I have to wear my glasses for the duration of the affliction. People tell me that this is not a bad thing; however, it is my personal belief that my glasses make me look a lot like Alex Trebek, which is of course not a look most college gals are after.

So, now I've written this column, and I expect that the Collegian editors will let my eye heal up before it erupts into a gooey, blown out mutant ninja turtle type deal (it's been known to happen.) Hopefully none of you will be so foolish as to refuse to come near me; such action is childish and wrong.

And also pointless. I ran around this morning and touched every issue of the Collegian I could find. Happy reading!