Anyway, this morning I walked into the bathroom on my way to my second class and found a girl wearing nothing but a hose. A garden hose. Wrapped around her body like strapless dress or something. There was a sort of awkward moment where I debated whether or not to just turn around and leave, like I had just walked in on an intimate moment, but that would throw me off schedule. After my initial surprise, I realized that she was probably just preparing herself for an art project, since I was on the same floor as many art classrooms...and this thought was strangely depressing. When I see bizarrity (yeah, that's a word now) in the world, I want it to be real. I don't like things to be bizarre intentionally, because that ruins the magic of the situation. I prefer when people are bizarre without trying, because to them their particular brand of behavior is normal. The weirdos I love are the sort of people who wake up and say to themselves, "Of COURSE I sing the Hokey Pokey loudly while I'm on my way to work," or "OF COURSE I look and act like Jesus." It's not a statement or choice, like dressing yourself in a hose for an art project is.
But eventually I left the hose girl and went on to my class taught by an Italian. I'm trying as much as possible to avoid giving dentifying details that could potentially embarrass someone (not that they would be reading my blog, but I'm just careful of what could turn up in a google search), so I'll just say that he teaches in the humanities. So, that narrows it down. But whatever, so I always try to be sensitive to foreign people, since I was once foreign and sounded about as smart as a babywipe when I spoke Hebrew....but sometimes it's just so hard. Today the prof kept using a word that sounded like "jomatical," like maybe five times. And I worked up a sweat trying to decide whether this was a word in English I didn't know or whether this Italian guy was just making up English words left and right. I wish I had tried that in Israel, making up words. Let's say you're pretty damn good at Hebrew, but you can't remember the word for "figuratively." So instead of embarrassing yourself by asking, you just totally whip up a new word out of the blue, but say it with such confidence that the natives wonder if they're the idiot.
I gotta say, I love this prof. He reminds me of a puppy. I think he's afraid of the microphone/speaker system, because every day he gets startled by the sound of his own voice in the speakers behind him, and so every day he asks in this sort of soft, wounded voice, "Is it too loud? Can you hear me?" And no one in the class responds, not even with simple yes or no gestures, and instead keep quietly chitchatting among themselves. So the prof says to himself in his little wounded voice, which is picked up by the mic and broadcast throughout the lecture hall, "Hmm...well, I think it's very loud...so....hmmm.....how do I do this...?"
Just a brief digression: my prof doesn't actually look like Mario. But he's Italian. So....they're probably somehow related.
I also really like that he, like most charming foreign people, doesn't quite use the right word. On several occasions he has said something like, "Just listen for a few more minutes and then I will liberate you early." I love the idea of using liberate instead of dismiss. It makes class feel so much more dramatic, as though once we're outside the lecture hall we've earned the status of "refugee," having been liberated from the camp of immense suffering and involuntary captivity that is that class, and now we must wander as asylum seekers to our next class. As though each anniversary of our liberation from class will be remembered as VJB Day (Victory in the Journalism Building Day), the sort of thing I'll tell my grandchildren about.
After class I sought asylum in the neighboring building, one that shelters both the religion and classics departments, and I immediately made a note to never set foot in that part of the building ever again. Why? Well, its halls are filled with wandering professors, professors that I've had before but have not kept in touch with, the kind of professor who once knew my name and my opinions on things but to whom I've since become a stranger because of a prolonged absence. It's humiliating to be around them, since I don't know whether I should acknowledge them and have them look startled and confused to be greeted by a person who is an apparent stranger to them (as has already happened), or if I should pretend that they are total strangers to me--which, I've found, can result in them greeting me as an old acquaintance.
Today I saw two former profs walking together (an uber Jew and an uber Christian, funnily enough), and they were getting really close to me as they made their way down the hall. And I, completely out of any reasonable options, pretended to be suddenly struck by an overwhelming fascination with a crumpled up flyer that I found at the last second in my sweatshirt. This was a real game changer for me, since normally I just avoid awkward interaction with people by pretending I don't see them because checking the time on my watch can take up to five minutes. If I don't have a flyer on hand and I forgot to wear my watch, sometimes if I'm really desperate I'll even read a Skittles wrapper.
Here's sort of what my normal interaction aversion techniques look like:
"I'm so sorry I didn't greet you, but this is an absolutely fascinating piece of trash I just found. Even more interesting than my watch."I often wonder to myself, "What are you afraid of, Sam?" And to be honest, there's nothing to be afraid of. I live for awkward moments, and there's nothing to fear with these profs. How can I fear a professor who walks like a gangly teenager, in a sort of upright slouch with his hands in his pockets? Or maybe even more terrifying is the prof who looks like a red-faced "Mr. Magoo."
But no sooner had I escaped those two professors than I ran into an even older prof, a man who--at his best--I knew as a creepy old man. A prof who knew me well when I was in his class, but with whom I never really had a warm relationship with, to put it mildly. Having just used my flyer diversion, I was unprepared to suddenly resume my battle position. And I panicked. So, of course, I did was any reasonable person would do....
I just turned around and started running.
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