The recruitment officer stared at me. "A

The recruitment officer stared at me. "A building's on fire, you have to save everyone inside. What are your preferred tactics?" I thought about it. "I like the orange ones. Why?"

, pause confusing is the act of freezing in place while confused. Sort of like freeze tag. So I froze, but my confusion kept getting worse. The recruitment officer screamed, "what

the f*ck are you standing there for like a deer in the headlights of my jeep? Sign! You want to wear a full metal jacket don't you?" My hand was frozen with his quill pen above

the enrollment contract. I buckled under the pressure and signed. Just as I did, a trapdoor in the ground opened and I fell down through a chute into blackness. My clothes

- surprisingly, remained on my body. To keep in the spirit of the time's I tore them off with a

hideous, pained shriek, like an animal found by police. One by one I tore the fanged leeches from my body, and huge hunks of skin came with. Their teeth are like staples, and I had

A staple remover. I tore at the leeches furiously and wondered if by the end I would have any skin left at all. Fortunately when all was done I still had a 4 centimer square on my

elbow. I gently nursed this tiny patch of skin and fed it with beef broth until it started to grow back over my body. But my new skin was different

. It gained intelligence every day. One day I woke up and looked at it. It somehow LOOKED BACK at me and said, "E = mc ^2." And I knew then I'd never have a moment's peace again.