April 19, 2010

From “Chris the Intellectual” by C. J. Hanover

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I found myself waiting in his office with plenty of time to kill ans not a whole lot to look at save the mammoth bookcase behind the desk.

The volumes on the shelf ranged from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to the second edition of Integral Calculus. The bindings weren’t worn, and I got the feeling that these books were present not for the entertainment of their owner but rather served to intimidate any lesser minds who happened to glimpse the shelf’s contents.

“Maybe that’s his strategy,” I grumbled. “Sit people down and have his library intimidate them. Softens ’em up.”

 

March 27, 2010

From “Emotional Guide to Wayne Falls, IN” by Stacey Addison

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But I digress. This professor, who I believe I said should remain nameless, had it in his mind to debunk before the class each and every emotion known to man.

And he started with love.

“Love,” he said,” is merely a biochemical reaction designed to see that our genes are passed on. Do any other creatures feel love as we experience it? Of course not! It’s all instinct, from the courtship dance to the nest building. Anyone who says otherwise probably works for a greeting card company or chocolatier.”

“When you reduce things to their basics,” he continued, “it’s all biochemistry.”

My neighbor in the lecture leaned over. “Word has it he’s conducting some practical experiments along those lines after hours.”

 

February 20, 2010

From “Anatomy of an Examination” by Constance Beck

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The day after Reuben stumbled into my office, I was scheduled to give his class a particularly hard test; naturally, I assumed he’d come by to weasel out of it.

I called my hardest tests “Grannykillers” because I noticed there seemed to be a severe uptick in students’ grandmothers dying whenever I gave one. Sometimes as many as three or four grandmothers would die in a single week; I’d often suppose aloud that they must have been on the same bus. From my colleagues I knew that some students went through five or more grandmothers a semester. To my irritation, no one ever claimed that their grandfather had died—Karen’s kids wouldn’t even get that much use out of me.

It only took me a moment to see that Thursday’s Grannykiller was the least of Reuben’s problems.

 

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