A student this week mentioned professors and perfection in the same breath. I believe she needs to see the errors of my ways.
Last week, for instance, having finished lunch, I took my plate to the dog's bowl outside. Leaving the door open, I scraped the scraps off. Spotting the opportunity, a fly buzzed in, hooked right, collided with a window some way up the stairs. It dropped, stunned.
Grabbing what was close-- a box of contraceptive pills, as it happened-- I smashed the beast, thinking, as one does, that this was some kind of double jeopardy in the eyes of right-to-lifers.
Dizzy from the speed of the hit, I turned to descend stairs, paid little attention.
Missing three, I dropped. Stunned, I struggled to bring myself once again perfectly to vertical, then decided with alacrity, that all this should be thoroughly written up as a potentially important study on the varieties of professorial vanity.
David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon
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