Assignment #4: The Me I'd Like to Be

Let me say again how much I love this essay.

[From the notebook they gave us:]

Write a personal statement entitled "The Me I'd Like To Be," to be included in a special yearbook commemorating your 10-year high school reunion.  Imagine that you have graduated from the [university], continued on to graduate/professional school or found a job, and have finally begun to "settle down."  Your 10-year high school reunion is coming up soon and it's time to examine all those goals and dreams you shared with your high school classmates.  What does your life look like ten years beyond high school?  Are you done with your educational goals yet?  What is your "family" aspirations?  What is that dream job you now have?  Where do you live?  How are you contributing to society or your community?

This assignment is meant to get you to really think about where you are going...

Apologies to all those who love this sort of thing, but I cannot do assignments like this straight-faced.  It's not in me, unless I lied my way through it.  Which I frequently do anyway, it turns out.  As for sharing my goals and dreams with my high school classmates?  Yeah, whatever...

Grade: 100% (it must have been a horribly dull job, grading papers for this class--maybe they understood my sarcasm perfectly and gave me high marks just for breaking their tedium)

The Me I'd Like to Be

Dear Friends:

I apologize for being unable to attend our ten-year class reunion; I truly wish I could have seen all of you again, to take stock of how far we've come and what we still wish to achieve. Unfortunately, my current lifestyle does not permit me to travel back to the United States. As I write this letter, I am sitting in a hut in a small village on the edge of the Saharan desert in Mali, but by the time you receive it I will have undoubtedly moved on. I would love to enclose a current picture of myself, my husband Tahir El Fadil, and our four children, but were this letter to be intercepted before reaching you, such identification might prove fatal for all of us.

I must admit that as I sat in the fluorescent-lit classrooms of [...], I had no idea what was in store for me. In fact, there was no hint of the extraordinary turns my life would take until a mere four years ago, when I was in my second year of graduate studies at the [university]. I had embarked on a career as a researcher in a plant genetics lab as I worked towards my doctorate in Plant Biotechnology, just as I had always imagined. Before me lay a life of nothing more dangerous than squinting through microscopes in air-conditioned laboratories--or so I thought. Then one day a fellow researcher suggested that I might benefit from a short trip overseas to study biotechnology in foreign countries. On an strange, unfamiliar impulse I agreed and signed up for the very next opportunity to study abroad, a group trip to Egypt for six weeks, sponsored by my department. Unfortunately, the university was experiencing sharp budget cuts and we were forced to purchase airline tickets for ourselves on a cut-rate air carrier called Fly-O-Matic that promised to fly us through friendly air for half the cost. We were aloft above the Saharan desert when the anti-aircraft missile struck, splitting the tiny plane in two and sending it plummeting towards the burning sand. Happily, I survived, relatively unhurt, by wrapping myself in the extra-stuffed fire retardant goose down comforter I had brought along, "just in case;" tragically, I was the only survivor, as I discovered when I crawled out of the flaming wreckage amid the bodies of my eighty-three classmates. Still, the vast red emptiness of the desert stretched before me in all directions and though I had learned in my [this class] discussion group that I could find water by cutting open nearby cacti, I felt certain I was going to perish.

Fate smiled down on me, however; the snow-white goose down comforter I dragged behind me eventually attracted the attention of a band of wandering Malinke tribesmen. Far from being primitive nomads, the Malinke were sophisticated, shrewd, and well-educated and quickly realized the value of a [university] graduate student in plant biotechnology. They adopted me as one of their own and took me back to their surprisingly high-tech village, putting me to work on developing the ultimate sorghum bomb that would utilize a common crop to bring about the total annihilation of their arch enemies, the Voltaic tribe, who were well-armed with missiles and machine guns supplied by nefarious individuals in unnamed Western countries. Though the Malinke eventually offered to deliver me to the capital city of Bamako, where I could surely find a way back home, I declined, filled with the desire for vengeance against those who had shot down my airplane and savagely murdered my fellow students. A few months passed as I feverishly worked on the sorghum bomb, my research constantly interrupted by Voltaic raids, government army crackdowns, and sorghum shortages. I found myself growing closer and closer to my research partner, Tahir El Fadil, a Malinke scientist who had, coincidentally, once studied at the [university] at Chicago. One night, after consuming a bit too much of the locally-made millet wine, our passion and our latest experiment suddenly ignited, giving birth to a love and a bomb that would change our worlds.

Since that night, we have been on the run, scrambling from safe house to safe house in Mali, dodging the bullets fired by the villainous Voltaics in their quest to possess the only two people living who can build the ultimate organic weapon of destruction. We have participated in military takeovers, instigated student protests, and maneuvered in and out of the enemy's confidence, all in the fight to restore the Malinke to their proper place in the government and to obliterate the terrorist Voltaics. Each step of the way we have been joined by the greatest joy in our lives, our four children, Liberty, Valiant, and the twins, Victory and Glory.

Even though I cannot be with you at this special occasion, I look forward to the time when we can all return to the peaceful surroundings of [area]. I hope someday I can complete my education at the [university] and focus my energies less on the harmful side of biotechnology and more on its uses to produce food for the world. As the flares of surface-to-air missiles sparkle overhead, I dream of a cool spring day when the sun will glint off the emerald-green grass in the front lawn of my modest wooden farmhouse, and I will be able to visit all of my friends who saw me through the first eighteen years of my life.

Sincerely,

[me]

This letter was received on April 12, 2008. On April 13, a tremendous blast of unknown origin rocked the sleeping city of Tombouctou in central Mali, leveling the mostly Voltaic neighborhoods and coating the debris with a dark sticky syrup. The current location of [...] is unknown.--Editor

One problem, as it turns out--cactus doesn't grow in the Sahara (so I've been told).  Who knew?

Guess who "Tahir El Fadil" is named after...I couldn't resist giving in to my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine leanings. ;)

The only comment on it was "Great effort! I loved it!"  Well put, I think.