Today, the National Institutes of DUH released a study saying that distractions of any kind impede learning. I discovered this the hard way back in 1993, when a line of Rockettes doing high kicks across my dorm room kept me from memorizing the three main causes of the Civil War, thus ending my budding career as a US historian. Those pesky distractions, coupled with the study skills of a squirrel with ADD, led to a lot of uncertainty during my college career.

The problem with study skills began back in high school. Like any good Gen-Xer, I blame my parents for that problem, with a shout-out to my older siblings for setting such low standards for the rest of us. By the time I went to high school, a “C-” was considered cause for a high-five.

My twin sister and I took many of the same high school classes, so we’d often study together, using the “Harlequin Presents Method.” The HPM states the following: For every five pages of densely-written European History text, the student may reward herself with five pages of “The Millionaire’s Mistress,” by Penny Jordan. At the end of the night, we had learned the following:

1) Hadrian’s Wall was really, really long.
2) The feudal system, like, totally sucked.
3) Valorie Denton and Dex “Deverill” Biscotti, were soul mates. *dreamy sigh*

Of course, we found Val and Dex way more interesting than the Treaty of Ghent, so we’d end up reading five pages of history followed by 280 pages of romance novel. Over that year, I learned very little about history and a whole lot about what would happen to me if I ever took a courier job and wound up at an Italian Villa.

On the good side, I learned how to plot a Harlequin Presents novel:

1) Young English woman (Valorie) travels to Italy, where she meets a suave international businessman (Deverill).

2) They’re overcome with passion.

3) Two hours later (gotta love those Italian men!), she answers the phone in the villa. It’s an icy woman named Fiona, who implies that she already has a relationship with Dev.

4) Devastated, but too proud to tell Dev the real reason she’s ticked off, Valorie pretends she wants nothing to do with him.

5) They find out she’s got a bun in the oven. This results in the following dialogue:

“You may still want your English lover, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to leave here with my child!”

“Stop it, Deverill! You’re hurting me!” She looked down and saw that Dev’s hand had already left a purple bruise on the tender flesh of her delicate arm.

“Caro mia! I am a brute!”

6) Valorie and Dev spend the next 200 pages glaring coldly at each other/succombing to passion/glaring some more, all because she’s too stubborn to say, “So, who’s this Fiona tart, anyway?”

7) She does something stupid to endanger the baby, e.g., falls off a horse, falls down a marble staircase, falls into a huge vat of biscotti, etc. It turns out to be just the thing to make Dev finally declare his love.

8) They live happily ever after for an entire day and a half, at which point another tramp phones and implies she’s sleeping with Dev. At least that’s how I always pictured their lives together. Fortunately, the books ended after plot step #7.

See? Now ask me about the Treaty of Ghent. Not a clue.