Campus Life

Nothing but Spring and sun since my return from launching C’mon Papa on the east coast. Having been lost in one block of New York’s lower east side for several hours, it’s a wonder I made it home.

So I’m back in my office and teaching again. Fresh students, fresh semester and, as Spring always brings, fresh construction sites trying to kill me.

The building next to mine is undergoing surgery of some kind. I know this because I tapped across campus into a chain link fence where a door should have been.. Then, like a rat, I followed its perimeter. Then, unlike a rat, I got lost.

I could hear a lot of loud crashing. Things, heavy things, fell from the building’s roof. Men tossed down debris, or maybe flung it at me, the moving target.

Until someone grabbed my elbow. “Here,” he said, “let me guide you around all this.”

As we walked, he narrated what we passed.

“And here’s the stairs, and here’s the ramp, and here’s the lawn...”

And there, on the central lawn, was a class.

“And now we’re passing the first aid students,” my guide said.

You see where this is going? First aid students, a class of them, right there.

Let’s do the math. Blind man wandering through falling debris in a construction pit equals very hopeful first aid students. This explains why they were so quiet. They were busy watching me for their big chance.