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Unwavering steadfastness...


Barron von Hammer

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I have recently had interesting conversations with my peers who have considered going back to college after a long hiatus (we are in our forties), either to finish what they started or to advance to graduate school. It was at this point that I remembered my first experience in going back to finish my degree (and later to grad school).

I would like to point out that idiocy is a preserved trait, one that I carry within my genetic code with unwavering steadfastness. Walk with me dear friend and experience life as one who treads into areas reserved heretofore for the criminally insane....

I had enrolled into college after a twenty year absence, this after dropping out at the tender age of twenty to pursue a life of adventure and mayhem. So at the wizened age of forty I decided to finish up what I started and get my degree. I signed up for several classes and started in the spring of 2005. One of my classes (a prerequisite) was an Oral Communications course entitled Speech. I had already missed one or two sessions due to late registration and was eager to get back into the swing of things. For many people, taking a course in which one must stand in front of class and give lectures is a daunting task, fortunately I am not concerned with this public display as I address twenty thousand people every Monday night.

So off I went, leaving early so I could get to class before it began. I arrived on campus and dutifully approached the room that my class was to be held in. As I walked in I was somewhat surprised that the class as a whole had already assembled, in fact there was only one chair left. I immediately made my way to my seat as the entire class stared at me in what I considered at the time to be a strangely incredulous and collective gaze. Immediately upon sitting down, I noticed the students, one at a time, rising up and walking to the podium to give a five minute speech on various odd topics and noticed with no small appreciable horror that I was next in line, my chair being situated in the sequential order to necessitate my turn at the podium. Obviously they were already in the stage of preparing and giving speeches, testament to the several sessions that I had already missed. Immediately my mind rushed itself into emergency mode and I began to mentally prepare a speech in my head in the few seconds that remained for spontaneous creativity to manifest itself. No problem I thought, I can wing this, the trick being to just effortlessly glide through a eloquent narrative out of my past, a little humor here, a little humor there, and presto, I have redeemed my truancy through trickery (that and a resultant conversation with the professor afterward).

I strode up to the podium with great aplomb and delivered a robust, and what I thought at the time, articulate soliloquy on a series of dramatic events in my life. Needless to say, I was minutely aware that my choice of topic was radically different from those given at hand, but nonetheless the muse was upon me. I noticed during my boisterous speech that I once again received the same incredulous stare, no doubt due to my prodigious oratory skills. I basked in the revelation that my peers were awestruck when faced with talent such as this. Then it dawned on me. I-was-in-the-wrong-class.

I had wandered into another class in session, not noticing the sign posted long ago on the door that my scheduled class had moved down the hall a week before. The incredulous stares were not, as I sadly imagined, testament to my elocution, but rather of disbelief that an individual had wandered into class and immediately addressed the congregation at present with a topic quite unlike that of previous experiences within the confines of the subject matter at hand.

I basked in my stupidity, as the professor, who unbeknownst to me, was quietly confused behind his desk, timidly informing me that I was evidently in the wrong class, though he tactfully admitted to being smitten with my tales of adventure. It is at this point that my ancient genetic strain of idiocy manifested itself and I had an immediate vision of running naked through a grass field, burning huts littering the landscape as I grunted and flung my spear with great force at the newly appeared homo sapiens that had invaded my ancestral homeland.

I thanked them and quickly left the room. Later that night my wife laughed hard enough to risk a brain aneurysm as I sat in the bathtub, letting the water cleanse me of my unrightousness.....

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Quite simply the best thing I have ever read on this forum! I pictured you as a somewhat senior Chesterton doing all that you say you do or have done to your own embarassment and therefore my reading pleasure.

Bravo

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That right there just made my day. I applaud your humility to post of your experiences and also your talent to at least not make yourself look like a complete fool in front of everybody else. :P

*cheers*

Encore!

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