Writing this column forced me to revisit my freshman-year self. Ladies and Gents, it wasn’t pretty. I was bombarded with images I’m loath to remember — of intrepid introductions at the ice cream social … of panicked phone calls home about language requirements … of a particularly tight and lacy brown tank top that made a brazen debut at an Arts & Sciences requirements meeting.

Moms and dads, stay with me.

My point is simply that while I’m hopelessly nostalgic for the bygone days of college (I graduated in May), I don’t look back at orientation week through rose-colored glasses.

I thought my legacy as a Sun columnist would be about something big. I thought it would be about God.

In October, I wrote a column called “A is for Atheist” in which I took a giant step out of the religious closet, professing aloud my rejection of theism and distinguishing myself as a capital-A Atheist.

I lay awake, eyes bloodshot, the night before publication. How would the campus react to my contention, phrased so starkly, that I do not believe in God? I played out scenes of apocalyptic fallout in my mind.

Dawn broke. And emails started to float into my mailbox.

I just found out that there is a mistake on the resume that I have been sending out in my job applications.

A member of Cornell Career Services notified me this week that this error accounts for why I failed to secure an interview with a potential employer.

I’m not talking about some wee, negligible oversight — a “9” where there should be an “8,” a double space instead of a single one. I’m talking about a mother load of a blunder, as monstrous and glaring as it is undeniably and irreversibly catastrophic.

Under my “Home Address,” I have the following listed:

Toronto, Ontario

Canada

Not a grammatical glitch or a formatting failure, but a stain on my record all the same.

[“This email is being sent to all students who … did not receive an interview.”]

My father always says that when it came time for him and my mother to have kids, it was like bam, bam, bam. Pregnancy. Delivery. Three kids. Three years. And that was all there was to it.

It doesn’t seem like so long ago that pregnancy was that simple. Men and women were copulating. Embryos were being inseminated. And, nine months later, wailing children were born unto this world. Bam. Bam. Bam.

“Nazi porn?”

That’s a term writer Ron Rosenbaum used in his Slate critique of this year’s film The Reader — “Don’t give an Oscar to The Reader.” Guess Rosenbaum was less than pleased to see a glowing Kate Winslet carry away a gold statue last Sunday for her starring role in the film.

In his scathing column, Rosenbaum summarized the film. While in prison for participating in the murder of 300 Jews, the protagonist, Hanna, taught herself to read. “What a heartwarming fable about the wonders of literacy and its ability to improve the life of an Auschwitz mass murderer!” he pronounced. “Get a load of those pages turning! Reading is fun!”

Dear Valentine,

Katie

OK. You caught me. I don’t exactly have a Valentine to celebrate with this year. And, truth be told, I have a nagging suspicion that I could end up spending my Feb. 14 curled up in a warm and sensuous embrace with none other than my senior honors thesis.

I feel that anguished sense of desolation that inevitably accompanies news that an aging relative is on her deathbed.

Old, infirm and hopelessly behind the times, the gray lady’s moment has arrived. The stale scent of death has already set in. And yet, I cannot help but resent the loss of so rich a life. Overcome with chagrin, I throw up my arms and plead frantically to the heavens. I dream of miracles.

In my case, the doctor’s prognosis is four months. four months! I should lie down and weep.

You should too.

“Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?” A stranger greets me on a Collegetown street corner. I grimace and keep walking. Suddenly, a second unfamiliar male — an accomplice to the first — leaps out from the shadows. Whipping out a digital camera, he captures my disgust before the two run away into the night. On the phone with my sister, I stare after them in dismay.

But something about having my little sister as an aural witness to the transgression got me all hot and bothered. So, when I saw the little assholes run into Collegetown Pizza, I decided I needed to give her a lesson in self-assertiveness.

Mustering all the maturity and poise I had in me, I stomped across the street to articulate my grave sense of grievance.

“Hey, shitheads. Who do you think you are?”

When I was seven years old, a boy told me there was no such thing as Santa Claus. I fired back, telling him, and the rest of my second grade class, that there was no such thing as God.

Thank Go[o]d[ness] Mrs. Galbraith was a proponent of free speech.

What an astute little girl I was. In the midst of fiery confrontation, I held my ground in the name of reason. I drew a logical parallel between what had been described to me as two omnipresent old men — both invisible, intangible, insoluble, and, I was promised, infinitely benevolent.

But given the way I was raised, my behavior was less than surprising.

Last week, presidential candidate John McCain choked on a big fat Viagra pill. From the comfort of my own home, I watched in horror as the dear old geezer coughed and stuttered, his cheeks flushed and his doe eyes brimming with confusion and panic.

They say the greatest sign of insanity is when you repeat an action over and over, expecting different outcomes. Once again, (this time during the second presidential debate), McCain was asked to account for his tacit approval of health insurance companies who cover Viagra for men but not birth control for women.

He’s made the mistake before. But maybe he figured that blabbering like an idiot … again … when asked the question would make the big bad journalists go away for good.

MAVERICK. MAVERICK.