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And then it hit me: I had learned nothing. But nothing doesn’t make an article really, so what I’m going to say I learned is that Delaware says something special to everyone. And I don’t mean something unique or distinct to each person, I mean that Delaware has a very special message, and one drive through it is enough to convey that message. And that message is: If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave.

It is cliche among the young people of Delaware, both the first and the last state, that when one grows up, one’s foremost ambition is to get the fuck out of here. This has always been clear to me, and was also my childhood dream. But as I prepare to get the fuck out of here, I can see that the wisdom of this seeming cliche is like the uncut diamond, and the only blade sharp enough to carve and shape this gem of wisdom, to make it clean enough to speak articulately, is the that least likely of instruments, the U-Haul truck.

When I think about the time I spent here, I remember it as a time where I searched in vain for something to do, and when I didn’t find anything, just like I didn’t find anything the night before or the night before that or the night before that, I just cranked up The Misfits and got high or drunk or both to try to numb myself to the boredom and shittiness that surrounded me. That endless pattern of strip-mall, housing development, strip-mall, housing development, strip-mall, housing development, has taken its toll on my eyes and my liver, but that’s all over now.

I know that Columbus certainly isn’t an oasis. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty shitty, too. They have their problems -- the homeless, the gangstas and wanna be gangstas, the corporate rape, the trash on the sidewalks, and everything else they have in situations of urban blight, but there’s one thing that can be said about Columbus that is undeniable. It’s not Delaware.

As I type, swallowing the gritty wine dregs at the end of my Chianti, I say to you, “I’m leaving. Hope you do, too. Cause it’ll suck to be around when the Salem II nuclear plant melts down, or Delaware City goes up like an Iraqi oil field, or DuPont’s corporate sewage seeps into the water and turns you all into mutated humanoid-monkeys with super powers like the fucking X-Men or something, only with tumors.”