Last Wednesday, I went to US History class, after sitting around at the bar at the golf course on campus (no joke - it is not as glamorous as it sounds, but it does have some really good french fries) with Brian, one of the guys from my class. We were waiting for our US History professor. We planned to buy him beers and ingratiate ourselves so that he would like our term papers and give us As. He never showed up, so we just talked for an hour or so and went to class.
Upon our arrival, the guy who teaches the class before our class was still at the front of the room. He wasn't packing up. He was just hanging out. After a few of us got there, he says "I'm sorry to tell you - your prof died over the weekend."
Oh. That would be why he never turned up at the bar.
I, like the idiot that I am, said "Are you serious?" Because really, is a seventy-something-year-old man going to joke about something like that? I know I wouldn't, if I were seventy-something, because I'd always be afraid that Death was standing over my shoulder, ready to make an example of me and my flip ass. So, yes. He was totally serious. We have absolutely no details (and I even looked up the obituary - it's just a death notice), so we have no idea what happened. We did discover that he had a wife. I had heard he had a French girlfriend. He may have had both. Wily old bastard.
Understandably, the new guy was baffled at our class rules. He just kept saying to himself "open book tests?!" as if we had told him that the professor had taught our class wearing reindeer antlers and a fuschia-pink serape. We did manage to convince him to keep our open-book test, and to keep our attendance-free policy, because it wasn't fair to the people who had developed expectations of the class based on the syllabus. (We like to call those people Test Day people, because that's the only time we see them.) I'm going to class today just to see what it's like.
While I thought he was a horrible history professor, he was a pretty nice guy. And I'm so sorry to hear of his passing. I feel really badly for his wife, and possibly his girlfriend, if he had one. And his kids, which I know he had, because he told me about them once. But I can't help but be glad that, if he's in heaven now, he's got all the facts straight. And also, if he's up there, he's probably read this blog. Sorry for making fun of you so much, Miller, but really - you deserved it.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Newsflash: I am old.
I've mentioned before that my thirty-third birthday is giving me hives. Not literal hives, figurative ones. And that sucks worse that the literal ones, because at least with those, take a little Benadryl and they go away. There is no figurative Benadryl.
Usually, it's your landmark birthdays that give you grief. For my twenty-fifth birthday, I had a small child, so that one didn't bother me. I was suitably distracted from the implications of my thirtieth by a surprise trip to New York City. (That trip was so surprise that the actual destination was a secret until we actually boarded the plane to Newark, NJ. All I knew was that we were going on a trip and I needed a pretty dress. Still the all-time favorite birthday. Good work, Spike and Speith.)
For some reason, this one is really getting to me. And it's not the fact that I'm officially one-third of a century old, although if you say that out loud, that's fucking daunting. It's also not that people keep telling me it could be so much worse, I could be 40 or 50 or whatever. I get that. I'm not sure what it is.
The birthday itself was wonderful. On Friday night, the birthday eve, we went out to a fancy dinner with Speith and his family, and our little family of four. We had a fantastic time. I got absolutely smashed. And it's a little bit sad when your nine-year-old goes with you to the bathroom at the end of the night to make sure you don't fall into the toilet. (Me: What would you do if I did fall into the toilet? M1: I would go get Dad. He's right outside the door.) The good part to that is that she's not witness to my drunkenness terribly often, but now I'm pretty sure she equates birthdays with drunkenness. Or maybe just my birthdays with drunkenness. And maybe her dad's. As both kids noted when we walked into the restaurant: "It's Mom's turn to have wine and drinks! It was Dad's turn last time!" (Last time being Dad's birthday.) Although, she appears to have taken the example of my entire life as a horrible warning. Here are the things she will never, ever do: smoke, drink alcohol (it's a drug, Mom!) and have a baby. I may be raising a very boring adult. Who is apparently directly from the 1940s, because she informed me this weekend that "I'm not steamed about that cat business anymore." (Which is to say: she's no longer angry at her father for not allowing us to adopt a cat on impulse yesterday. She did, however, punish him by crying like her heart was broken for a solid hour. She didn't win, but never underestimate a nine-year-old's powers of manipulation.) It's all fodder for more emotion-laced therapy sessions, but now we have to worry about the possibility that they will be emotion-laced, new-age therapy sessions, what with the possibility of past lives that has now been introduced thanks to her seventy-year-old vocabulary.
Saturday, the children gave me gifts: a bottle of Faith Hill perfume from M2 (it was all sealed up, so he couldn't smell it before he bought it for me - so he went on bottle aesthetic as his criteria) and a Happy Birthday Barbie from M1. I think that it might have been a bit of a boomerang gift, but she insists that it's because I collect Barbies. Really, the Holiday Barbie 2001 I have belongs to her. The other two Barbies are Frank Sinatra-centric, and not purchased for the "Barbie" part at all. In any case, I thanked her and put HB Barbie on the shelf with the others. Saturday night, the kids went to Grandma's for a sleepover, and Spike and I went to eat Thai food and see movies. We saw Your Highness, which was not as awesome as I wanted it to be, and Paul, which was more awesome than I had any right to hope for.
The day sped by, and it mostly just felt like a day.
I don't know that there are any deep-rooted reasons for feeling this way, other than the society-imposed feeling that I absolutely should not be doing all this at the age at which I'm doing this. It seems to just be a feeling of uneasiness, like my mortality is creeping up on me like a ninja wearing an invisible suit. I can hear him breathing, but I still can't see him.
Usually, it's your landmark birthdays that give you grief. For my twenty-fifth birthday, I had a small child, so that one didn't bother me. I was suitably distracted from the implications of my thirtieth by a surprise trip to New York City. (That trip was so surprise that the actual destination was a secret until we actually boarded the plane to Newark, NJ. All I knew was that we were going on a trip and I needed a pretty dress. Still the all-time favorite birthday. Good work, Spike and Speith.)
For some reason, this one is really getting to me. And it's not the fact that I'm officially one-third of a century old, although if you say that out loud, that's fucking daunting. It's also not that people keep telling me it could be so much worse, I could be 40 or 50 or whatever. I get that. I'm not sure what it is.
The birthday itself was wonderful. On Friday night, the birthday eve, we went out to a fancy dinner with Speith and his family, and our little family of four. We had a fantastic time. I got absolutely smashed. And it's a little bit sad when your nine-year-old goes with you to the bathroom at the end of the night to make sure you don't fall into the toilet. (Me: What would you do if I did fall into the toilet? M1: I would go get Dad. He's right outside the door.) The good part to that is that she's not witness to my drunkenness terribly often, but now I'm pretty sure she equates birthdays with drunkenness. Or maybe just my birthdays with drunkenness. And maybe her dad's. As both kids noted when we walked into the restaurant: "It's Mom's turn to have wine and drinks! It was Dad's turn last time!" (Last time being Dad's birthday.) Although, she appears to have taken the example of my entire life as a horrible warning. Here are the things she will never, ever do: smoke, drink alcohol (it's a drug, Mom!) and have a baby. I may be raising a very boring adult. Who is apparently directly from the 1940s, because she informed me this weekend that "I'm not steamed about that cat business anymore." (Which is to say: she's no longer angry at her father for not allowing us to adopt a cat on impulse yesterday. She did, however, punish him by crying like her heart was broken for a solid hour. She didn't win, but never underestimate a nine-year-old's powers of manipulation.) It's all fodder for more emotion-laced therapy sessions, but now we have to worry about the possibility that they will be emotion-laced, new-age therapy sessions, what with the possibility of past lives that has now been introduced thanks to her seventy-year-old vocabulary.
Saturday, the children gave me gifts: a bottle of Faith Hill perfume from M2 (it was all sealed up, so he couldn't smell it before he bought it for me - so he went on bottle aesthetic as his criteria) and a Happy Birthday Barbie from M1. I think that it might have been a bit of a boomerang gift, but she insists that it's because I collect Barbies. Really, the Holiday Barbie 2001 I have belongs to her. The other two Barbies are Frank Sinatra-centric, and not purchased for the "Barbie" part at all. In any case, I thanked her and put HB Barbie on the shelf with the others. Saturday night, the kids went to Grandma's for a sleepover, and Spike and I went to eat Thai food and see movies. We saw Your Highness, which was not as awesome as I wanted it to be, and Paul, which was more awesome than I had any right to hope for.
The day sped by, and it mostly just felt like a day.
I don't know that there are any deep-rooted reasons for feeling this way, other than the society-imposed feeling that I absolutely should not be doing all this at the age at which I'm doing this. It seems to just be a feeling of uneasiness, like my mortality is creeping up on me like a ninja wearing an invisible suit. I can hear him breathing, but I still can't see him.
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