Pam Stone, I just want to say, ‘Hi’

By Drew Millard

I don’t know if you’re reading this, Pam, and I don’t know if my sentiment will make you feel old, but wow, I’m honored. I am thoroughly amazed that I get to share the same newspaper with the same woman who I used to watch on TV. Coach. Radio.
Comedienne. Wow. Again, she was on Coach. I’ve never been on the news. I don’t know if this drags her reputation down or pulls mine up — I think that she is quickly becoming a vastly more popular columnist than I am, though.

That said, Pam, if you think that my generation is doing fine, you’re kind of wrong. We have no idea what we’re doing. To give us any credit otherwise is to flatter us, and we’re young — we don’t need flattering, seeing as we know everything anyways.

It honestly astonishes me that I share this space with her. I’ll stop sucking up in a moment, but let me both plug my blog and her existence in the same paragraph:

The link to my blog on the Tryon Daily Bulletin website is right above the link to Pam Stone’s, which makes me one degree (if one were to operate within the universe of the board game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon), which makes me probably at most four or five degrees away from anyone you can name/shake a stick at. I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: Hi, Pam. I’m Drew. We might not ever meet, but I feel like I know you, probably because I’ve seen you on TV. You’re much more famous and much funnier than I am, but maybe you’ll make me better by osmosis, I guess, if somebody picks up the wrong edition of the Friday paper, and hoping to see your column in there, instead sees mine. Hell, it could happen. Either that, or you’ll inadvertently force me into a very early retirement.

I can say the h-word in the paper, right? I mean, Pam got to swear in her column, so I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to. Oh gosh, I’m turning into a prima dona. Sorry, I’m rambling.

But anyways, if you’ve wondered where I’ve been all summer, I’ll tell you where I am right now. I am currently sitting on a bed in room 306 or Brewer Dormitory Hall at Meredith College in Raleigh North Carolina. The occasion is Governor’s School East, and I am attending in the field of English. This is the first in a series of three columns dealing with life at the Governor’s School, and even though I’ll probably be back in town by the time these hit the news stands, my hope is that it’ll be a nice little retroactive tale from the world outside of Polk County.

I realize that I’ve kind of used up all of my allotted space at this point, so I’ll just leave you with this: I love it here. I love getting up at 7:30 in the morning when none of my friends have thought of going to bed. I love having to sometimes walk to another dormitory if my water gets shut off as a result of construction work. I love having a roommate — it makes Governor’s School almost like going to a six-week-long sleepover, only you can’t go and spend the night with anybody else.

I love my classes here; they challenge my mind and the way I view the world — they literally are expanding me as a person. I kind of even love the fact that the food here is worse than low-grade dog food, which means everyone pigs out in their room at all hours. I love the fact that there are only about ten places in the outside world that we can go to, and I love even more that at least half of these establishments are owned, operated, and run exclusively by hippies.

But most of all, I love the people here, and I love the lesson that Governor’s School is teaching me: the journey is paramount; the destination is secondary.

That said, if Pam’s still reading, I really want her to know that she should probably give my generation a chance. We’ll all come out of this alive. You did.