The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

I 've gotten my fair share of college recruitment mail since last fall, and I now consider myself something of a connoisseur of the medium. I have my own private museum of college correspondence anomalies, each labeled with my personal nickname for it. Among the highlights are: - The U of Chicago Tablecloth, a poster three feet by four feet in size. It came folded up, with the obligatory "Join Our Mailing

List" postcard attached to the middle with a small amount of very springy glue. - The University of Pennsylvania Switcheroo, whose envelope was addressed to me but whose contents began "Dear Ms. Palkjanferhellip;" - The Wellesley and Whitman Novellas, both of which stand on the line between "pamphlet" and

"book". - The Amherst Encyclopedia, which at 70 pages (and sporting a spiral binding) abandons all claim to pamphlethood.

And nowhellip;

Just when I thought it was safe to open the mailboxhellip;

The LETHAL WEAPON.

At first glance, it looks innocuous enough: a cute little recruitment pamphlet, square, a nice dark blue color.

And then you notice the college name printed on it - it's one of those "good" places back east, the irongated clusters of brick and marble that charge half of Taiwan's GDP as tuition.

But the real shock comes when you try to pick it up.

You can't.

The LETHAL WEAPON is over 130 pages long and the better part of an inch thick. It has an index, pagination, chapters, and a stiffas all-get-out spine .

If you dropped it on concrete, the concrete would come out the worse of the two.

If you used it as a coaster and your glass tipped over and spilled onto it, you could complete the four-year education it advertised AND pay off the resulting mountain of student loans before the surface on which the LETHAL WEAPON was placed was in any danger of becoming even remotely damp.

It can probably stop bullets. (No, I haven't tested it yet, but I have a feeling.)

It makes skimpier mass mailings shrink away in terror.

I made the mistake of hurling the LETHAL WEAPON at my little brother at dinner after he spotted the name on the cover and called me a dweeb. Anybody who knows me knows I can't throw worth a darn, so it landed right square in the middle of the table and kept on moving.

So now, every time we get out the TV trays for dinner and tiptoe around the still-smoldering remains of what was once a table and chairs to the "safe" corner of the dining room, I get weird looks.

If it makes them feel any better, I dropped it on my toe shortly afterward.

And, well, people did warn me that college admissions can be painful. But those people had no idea.