Let’s face it. my turn is just the page we locate because we know perspectives is right around the corner. Sometimes we’re intrigued if there’s a particularly pathetic headline like more pushin’, less cushion, with a picture of a fat girl with a pretty face on a treadmill. Or maybe it’ll bait us with some overtaxed homemaker surrounded by her five children, looking exasperated but maintaining a knowing smile. I’m sure she has some insight into what’s important in life. Come on, it’s her turn!

Anyway, I have a suggestion to spice up my turn. Take a page from that old television show “Real People.” At first it was appropriately titled, centering on inspirational stories that could happen in any given neighborhood. Then it did one story on some freak who could stick nails through his lips, and you know what happened? The ratings exploded. Well, I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it happened or if I’m getting it confused with “That’s Incredible!” Anyway, NEWSWEEK, you need to get out there, put in a little legwork, quit shirking your responsibilities to bring us the best in “newsertainment” and find some real weirdos to write essays for my turn.

I want the turban-wearing roller skater on Venice Beach to have a turn. I want to hear from the guy who puts rocks in his mouth for teeth. What about the lunatic who dances in a red, white and blue Speedo next to the highway holding a sign that says will work for chewing gum? I’ll bet the world is full of eccentrics willing to take a turn. Absurdity is always interesting. Remember that.

Eight hundred words. Man, that’s a long essay. Which brings me to my next point: these my turns are way too long. Break them up into two turns, maybe a right turn and a left turn. Maybe one my turn can be a straight man and the second my turn can make fun of the first one. You can call it “Turn and Burn,” and design a cool logo for it. Maybe inside each my turn you can insert running parenthetical commentary on why the essay is so sophomoric. Call it “Turn and Learn.”

Maybe you could pick out the single worst my turn submitted and run it under the headline “My Turn Spurned.” Make it particularly maudlin, so we could all get a good laugh and NEWSWEEK could bring fleeting joy to a needy soul. Wouldn’t that be a win-win situation?

You know who needs a turn? The person who has to read all these my turns. I can’t imagine what the reject pile must look like. Does NEWSWEEK pay for the my turn rejecter’s therapy bills? Is he known around the office as the “Dream Destroyer”? I mean, people who submit essays to my turn have to be desperate, don’t they? Does the desperation waft off the e-mails in waves, enveloping the whole office in its fetid cloud of amateurish inferiority? I’ll bet the real NEWSWEEK writers don’t want to sit anywhere near the Dream Destroyer lest they be infected. I’ll bet the Dream Destroyer is just a normal office employee who could shed some insight into all of our lives. Why don’t you put him on the my turn page?

Uh oh. Now I’ve gone and done it. I set out to write an “Anti-Turn” but it has all the earmarks of an actual my turn. Heartwarming picture to draw in the readers? Check. Profound platitudes? You betcha. Folksy language dressed up with a thesaurus? Jackpot. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. My my turn was going to be angry, dismissive, superior and truly insightful. It was going to be the Allen Ginsberg of my turns. But as I crept closer to 800 words, my my turn took a U-turn. Truth is, as much as I complain, every week I turn right to this page and lap up the pathos like a thirsty kitten. Maybe all along I just wanted a turn of my own, but I was too afraid.

This reminds me of the time I was 12 and was afraid to go down the water slide. My grandfather winked at me and said, “Give it a try, kid. You might just like it.” He was a profound old man, my grandpa. Love you, Papa!