Thirteen years. Thirteen years, and my school career has come to a crashing halt. I can't go on. It's a tragedy.

    My brain is full.

    That's right, completely full. Beep-- this disk is full. Please insert another. If only it were that easy.

    It was never really a problem before college. Let's face it-- you don't learn all that much in high school. Back then, most of my brain was filled with useless trivia, TV theme songs, and things I learned in Mrs. Balbach's eighth grade social studies class-- like who founded Georgia (James Oglethorpe), who was the first cartographer to put America on the maps (Martin Waltsemuller), and who introduced the proposal for the Declaration of Independence (Richard Henry Lee, of the first family of Virginia.) We also spent a record amount of time learning about something that involved us chanting, again and again, "GuadLUPE HIDalgo." I don't remember what, if anything, Guadalupe Hidalgo had to do with American history. But the name is still there, taking up valuable brain space.

    Of course, there's more than just eighth grade social studies stored up there. For no particular reason, my brain still contains the Spanish equivalent to "Hello, John, what are you doing? I'm changing the tires on my car. I'll wash later," as well as several hundred thousand French songs, including chart toppers like "Venez Voir Ma Ferme" ("Come see my farm") and "Il y a un Rat dans le Grenier" ("There's a rat in the barn.") Avagadro's number (6.022 times 10 to the 23rd), the velocity of gravity (9.8 m/s), the voting system in England (first past the post)-- all potentially useless information, just sitting on the floor in the storage room of my brain, and I, like a packrat, just let them stay. Who knows when a physics problem might arise in everyday life that needs my critical attention?

    And of course, it's not only school stuff-- I can't even pretend to be that intellectual. One shelf of the storeroom, as the metaphor extends, is entirely devoted to the movie Clue, which, I am sad to say, I can quote from beginning to end (first line: "Sit!" Last: "I'm going home to sleep with my wife." See if I'm not right! It's sad, I tell you, sad!) At least half the available space is taken up by old song lyrics, which I can never quite call up until I hear the song on the radio. I could go years without hearing it, and then, one day, "U Can't Touch This" could come on, and I would be the hip-hoppin-est big pants rapper in the car. Every character who ever walked across the screen in a Hitchcock movie I can name. Every movie Gregory Peck was ever in, I know. TV, literature, theatre-- there's a little about everything. I am a walking fount of useless knowledge.

    It was never a problem before-- just something I could do to wow the occasional teacher, and annoy more than the occasional friend. But college has really been a space eater in the old cerebellum-- and, having crammed my brain as full as it's going to get with fact after potentially useless fact, things are starting to jump ship. For example, while I still retain the ability to quote, word for word, the preamble to the Constitution, I no longer know how to get to Wal-Mart from here.

    So, thirteen glorious years later, I'm through. It's not so bad, I guess. It gives me an excuse to go out and buy a new Trivial Pursuit board. So if you'll just point me towards Wal-Mart, I'll be on my way.