When it comes to all things physical, I am an extremely lazy individual.  Running, lifting weights, even sitting up straight — I hate it all.  

   If you’re wondering why I still swim, all I can tell you is that the reason involves beef jerky, Monster Energy and a pentagram.

   But if there is one thing that I have learned thus far in AP Microeconomics — besides the fact that you must pronounce “fifty” as “fiddy”— it is that time is a nonrenewable resource.

   Thus, when I say that I should be allowed to walk across the quad to my classes during a lightning alarm, I’m not being lazy — I’m simply being economical.

   Obviously, I’m not lazy to the point of being suicidal.  If the rain is heavier than the burdens of my past, then I will not walk out from under cover.  If lightning strikes have already claimed three overzealous middle schoolers’ lives, then I will not walk out from under cover.

   But if the last time that lightning struck was 20 minutes ago and the skies are clearer than Anderson Cooper’s skin, then I think I’ll take my chances.  Because at that point, some higher power must be involved if lightning strikes me.

   Now, if I had something exceptionally strong and sturdy — say, a plastic golf cart roof — to protect myself, then perhaps my vulnerable and exposed teenage body could hope to weather the perilous tropical storms of Central Florida.  But alas, as far as I know, no such mystical artifact exists.

   Here is my proposition: change the current protocol to allow us to prance around in the open as long as lightning has not struck within five miles of the campus instead of the current 10-mile metric.  At that point, students should already have figured out for themselves that they need to seek cover.  We can even give them those little Home Depot paint color samples to hold up to the sky to see if it’s stormy enough.

   One of the eight fundamental principles of economics dictates that actions can come with unintended consequences.  In Trinity’s case, the lightning protocol causes me to walk quintuple the distance if lightning strikes in Egypt.

   It’s Aull in the economics, my friends.