Rachel Nash and Larry Sianchuk, two graduate students at Waterloo, wrote
the following story and before reading it in class announced that it had
a moral. I asked them for their permission to publish it here. So what's
the moral to the story.
TV Guide
The WRiting ER
In this week's episode: A demure sophmore is rushed in, her poli-sci essay
haemorrhaging with run-on sentences. Meanwhile, WritingER staff are
already against the wall--literally--trying to cope with a raging freshman
suffering with a severe case of protracted writer's block (he's been in a
chemically-induced psychosis since frosh week). Eventually, a couple of
football players, cramming for their English Language Proficiency Exam,
step in and subdue the lad. In the midst of the melee, perennial PhD
candidate Shirk Grantless, who's been serving as the assistant director
of ER for the last five years, experiences a spiritual crisis when he
finally confronts his own addiction to figures of speech: cliches and
similes being his tropes of choice. He adds to the commotion by wailing
like there was no tommorrow over the pain of his cross-addiction,
screaming that no wonder he can't even write a successful funding
proposal--the ER is (and has for too many years been) desperately in need
of computer upgrades and an expressivist-writer's heart-on-sleeve
defribrillator; and no wonder, Shirk continues to ruminate, that he can't
even muster the discourse to ask the Chief Writing Surgeon (elegant
30-something Justin Case) out for a date. But, in the end, everything
works out when a former patient, the now rich 'n famous documentation
guru Perc O'Tooles, endows the ER with an ultra-generous donation of both
cash and volunteer writing consultants from the REAL WORLD.
The hint that Rachel and Larry provided us with was:
Never use the R word.
