"And if I am," he said running into his room, "I don't care!"

SO we passed the buck of who was responsible for The Mound, just as Congress and the president have accused one another of responsibility for the national debt.

And The Mound grew.

We began to check our geneologies. Are our fathers bald? Are our uncles bald? Are our maternal third cousins bald? What about the dog? In the height of hysteria, we ignored the basics of genetic research. After intense soul- searching, each of us concluded: "I won't be bald. Yeah, that's it."

Finally, crisis. The shower water could not break through The Mound, and the shower area began to flood. Our soap boxes and shampoo containers floated in the muck; taking a shower was like wading through the Nile.

It was time for action.

We bought drano.

From a distance of several feet, we threw cups and cups of drano upon The Mound. It hissed back at us. It began to move. But it didn't go away.

So we bought more drano. And more. We were now exceeding the recommended dosage by several orders of magnitude.

"Drano: the quick fix," we thought. Just stand back and the problem will go away. Is this what Congress hoped with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction package?

Finally, one roommate and I got down on our hands and knees and did the dirty work. We removed The Mound. We removed additional hair that had sunk into the shower drain. We removed so much hair it was as if one of those furry little dogs had simply died in our shower.

So as of last week, The Mound was gone. But now, as of the last few days, Son of Mound is beginning to grow.

In the meantime, absolutely no real progress has been made to balance the budget. Why?

Maybe it's because lawmakers don't have to worry about stepping in the national debt.