A little known fact among those who little know me is that I didn’t attend college until the ripe young age of 25. We won’t talk about the sundry explanations for this statistical outlier of a personal detail, but suffice it to say that given the stifling self-doubt inspired by the confluence of a quarter-life crisis and a charitably “unusual” biography I fully embraced the status bestowed by the word “freshman”, enough so that, shortly after my arrival in that monastic Santa Fe mountainside and upon waking up some time later after a several-weeks-long binge on 30-racks of Milwaukee’s Best to find myself dating the 19-year-old sophomore daughter of one of my professors, I’d routinely harass her for robbing the cradle and dating freshmen boys, a ribbing that was sadly limited in its utility as alcohol was our only meaningful bond and there were only a few occasions on which I could make that joke before sobering up and realizing what I had done.
But I digress.
Another little known fact among those who little know me is that before attending college I also sort of attended college as a part-time commuter who was still half-heartedly juggling an unrelated career in New York and that before throwing away all prior credit to go fluff my ego with ancient Greek and Great Books and gratuitous Aristotle references in casual conversation I’d racked up 90+ credits towards a B.A. in American history at the Distinguished University of the Distinguished State of New Jersey. There was an old legend that circulated in the history department there of a storied and aged professor who would deliver these sweeping, poetic lectures, an orator widely regarded among his colleagues as the smartest man any of them had ever met, a real character who every time he took to the lectern removed a worn slip of paper from his breast pocket to carefully read the inscribed note to himself—so carefully and deliberately that his lips would move as he read—and, upon returning the paper to his breast pocket, would deliver the most gripping, breathtaking lecture any of the attendees had ever heard. Nobody—not even his closest colleagues—had any idea what this note could have said, and for decades it would remain as great a mystery as Karl Malone’s free throw ritual. And then one day on his approach to the podium he was struck dead by an instantly fatal heart attack and the nearest T.A. came running not to check if he was breathing or to feel for a pulse but to go straight for the breast pocket to find out just what it was that this widely recognized genius would repeat to himself before every lecture he ever delivered. The note read,
18th century is 1700s.
19th century is 1800s.
