Fellow reporters and academics and a bunch of people I didn’t verify have been complaining on Twitter that they had lost the ability to tweet.

Loyal Scaiaholics will recall that I tweet for work, and I don’t especially care how many followers I have. Maybe I don’t have a check mark next to my name on Twitter, but I’ve got a check mark next to my life. My life has been verified as solid, and I don’t care to spend that time exchanging tweets with people. That’s time I could spend interviewing a penguin or something.

Let me explain.

This morning, I got an email from the Fort Worth Zoo. They had been named the best zoo in North America [an entire continent!].

The Fort Worth Zoo has been named the top zoo in North America, calling to mind the unlikely set of circumstances that once led to me interviewing a penguin outside Ol’ South Pancake House. I believe that was an exclusive. pic.twitter.com/zHv9av9UEr

— Alan Scaia (@scaia) July 17, 2020

Public relations people keep telling me the blog would get more hits if I talked about more personal things instead of just work. They also tell me I’d have more followers if I did the same on Twitter.

I’ve also taken the position, however, that I don’t want followers. I want people to blaze their own path.

But I understand their point. If the social media influencers talk about their mundane days, maybe I should whip you with more of the mundane parts of my day.

Earlier today, I was having a discussion with an associate from college. I’m planning a trip back to the Midwest to see the fam in a few weeks, and we were making plans to try to get together.

Reid and I took a history class together. Both telecommunications majors, our position on history was that we wouldn’t pay attention. Most of our notebooks consisted of smart-alecky comments to each other in the margins.

When I decided I should talk more about the mundane parts of life, I started rootin’ through boxes. I was certain that notebook was tucked away somewhere in all the boxes #MamaScaia brought down from Ohio when I bought the house.

I didn’t find the notebook in question. I did find my certificate honoring my improvement in social studies in 5th grade.

I also found a different college notebook, a notebook from an economics class:

Also scribbled in the margins were smart alecky comments exchanged with a different college associate. The professor was Robert Shupp, whom we called, “Super Shooper.”

You might think it’s strange I remember a nickname I gave a college professor at random almost 20 years ago, but I couldn’t tell you what any of those lines or letters mean. You might be a fool.

In our defense, many of those comments were, technically, related to economics:

And if we zoom out from the actual economics note, we see my associate had written a note of his own:

I’m disappointed I couldn’t find the history notebook, though. The topic one day was the Egyptian dynasty. For some reason, I had a pyramid drawn in the margin. Reid then added a cowboy next to it, who was saying, obviously, “Howdy, Pardner.”

We both remember that cowboy in Egypt vividly, but we’re texting now and cannot recall what may have led to the cowboy.

In conclusion, apparently, the Twitter hackers nearly started World War III. Maybe the way to prevent World War III is spend less time on Twitter.

You can take my advice, policy wonks. In addition to my epic improvement in social studies, I graduated college with honors. And I was apparently using the term, “wonk,” before it was cool.