I'm sure you know what today is. It's Valentine's Day. The day every single person in a relationship, open relationship and even in a "friends with benefits" situation rejoices in their happiness - and then proceeds to turn to every single person and mock them.
That being said, I'm not going to write an anti-Valentine's Day column or call it Hallmark Day or anything of the sort. That's been done far too much by now. It's a clich?© in and of itself.
Instead, this one goes out to the one I love. My one and only. He who sets my heart aflutter and gets me all smushy and mushy inside. That's right. Consider this column an ode to my dearest: Jack Bauer.
I know that I am not alone in my love for this hero. He is not monogamous to me, but I could not ask that of him. He is adored by countless numbers of people. Many of these people are college students. And why is that? What is it about "24's" clock-beating, gun-toting, hoarse-voiced protagonist that has campuses across the nation glued to their television sets every Monday night? Simple: we all see a little of Jack Bauer in ourselves.
The revelation first came to me a few Mondays ago, around 8:56:25 p.m. I was downstairs in my kitchen, preparing a snack to enjoy over the next hour of conspiracies, torture and bullets. Then, suddenly, a pickle jar fell out of the refrigerator ... and shattered! I soon found myself frantically fighting against the passing seconds. I was shouting "Get me a towel!" to a housemate and could hear the high-tension techno music in my head. The screen split to show both my worried expression and my hand picking up shards of glass. For a brief moment, I was Jack Bauer.
This was initially written off as a mildly amusing anecdote until I retold it to my friend. Upon hearing my harrowing tale, he said that he wished he could laugh at me, but he had had a similar experience. The prior week, he and his friends went shopping before the "24" premiere, only to find themselves in a mad dash back to their home and up the stairs with mere seconds to spare before the digital clock blipped to 8:00:00 p.m. For a few minutes they, too, were Jack Bauers.
But don't we all have those moments? Even if it's not us rushing to catch the beginning of "24," who hasn't raced to Eaton after oversleeping, or wanted to yell "There's not enough time!" as they hurried to finish a paper due in 14 minutes or shout "Dammit!" upon running out of mixers? Who here hums the "24" theme as they try to cram a week's worth of work into a Sunday night? I know I do.
This battle with time is not the only part of Jack Bauer that we identify with. He's a rule breaker, and so is the average college student. Sure, Jack may kill or torture people that he's not supposed to, or perhaps commit mild acts of treason/international sabotage while we just commit the occasional misdemeanor (speeding, underage-drinking, etc.).
Nevertheless, we all like to think that we're not doing it just for ourselves, but for the welfare of the nation and the future. We lowly college students watch the (often) rogue CTU agent week after week and are reassured that if it's against the law, it's probably the right thing to do.
Finally, in a way, we all share a Jack Bauer sense of time. Every day is long for your run-of-the-mill college student, and a lot can happen in one day. So what if you only met that girl 12 hours ago when you hooked up in ATO? That means you've known her for a freakin' half of a season! How dare she go and break your heart by flirting with someone else! And really, by Thursday night, who can remember what was going on in his 1 p.m. class? That episode was on weeks ago. We're facing a totally new subplot by now!
So this column is for you, Mr. Bauer. You stand up for freedom and no matter how hard you're knocked down you come back up again. Through your valiant actions, you embody the ideals of every student on every campus across the United States. You are both what we are and what we wish we could be.
Because really, how cool would it be if we could just shoot, punch, electrocute or shout our problems into submission, or if we could turn all our difficult math and science homework over to some awkward female computer geek to solve for us, or if we never had to sleep or eat or go to the bathroom? Or - well, you get the idea.
Happy Valentine's Day, folks! May it be "the longest day of your life."
