Did you know we don’t have a color printer? I sure didn’t.
When I first realized that our school didn’t have a color printer, several choice words ran through my head.
“Blasphemy” was one of them. Along with “treacherous,” “abomination” and “oh-my-god-I’m-so-screwed-this-is-due-in-four-periods-wait-can-I-go-to-Kinkos-oh-wait-I-can’t-drive.”
I mean really. We live in Cupertino––you know, that place your iPhone’s weather application is set to on that very first day. The home of Apple. At least two entire rooms are filled with shiny white Macintoshes.
What we don’t have is a color printer.
Certain I couldn’t be the only one shocked, I wandered looking for willing constituents to form a mass mob tasked with storming the library outfitted with glittery posters, poofy tutus and a rallying cry lifted from an Apple commercial I saw. Everything you see during class elections, but much, much better.
Instead, I got, “Of course we don’t have one. Didn’t you know?”
No, no I did not, because if I did, I would have hightailed it to Kinkos instead of complaining to you during my Chemistry class.
Try as I might, the rest of the day passed in a similar fashion — I would enter the room all flustered, people would look, listen and roll-roll-roll their eyes while getting back to doodling on their notebooks.
Clearly, they all have color printers. Or they finish their projects before Kinkos closes. It’s all the same to us printer-less procrastinators.
Either way, in the face of the three AP exams, two projects and one plan to revolutionize modern thought, lack of a color printer doesn’t have that same burning intensity anymore. I should know — I didn’t realize until I was looking frantically for the “color” option on the print menu one long year after I arrived as a freshman.
But I mean look at us. We cure cancer for breakfast and AIDS for lunch. When the going gets tough, we purchase caffeine in bulk and work from dusk to dawn, only stopping to take two hour naps in between. Maybe. Getting a color printer should be easy-breezy-beautiful-Cover Girl, except printing one of those advertisements for my mob posters would require color ink, and we don’t have that at our school.
Everyone tells us to try and help the community –– go plan birthday parties for the elderly, teach Java to underprivileged children do anything that makes a lasting mark for the better. They tell us that’s how we’ll get into college someday.
Maybe one way we can make our mark instead is helping future generations print in full color. It might not look as glamorous on an application, but hey –– I can promise that at 7:21 a.m. on a Friday there’ll be at least one person blessing your name in the library.
I know I will.
