Prompt #12 is to write an encounter with an old professor that is both short and scary. This story is fictional, but I didn't make it up. I'm using some of the characteristics of a real professor of mine, but the encounter here is fictional, and I do not believe that the real professor suffered as Dr. Tyler is.
It felt good to walk on campus again, after all these years. There were new buildings, and the students look younger, but I still could find the landmarks, the quad and the towers and the dorms where I lived.
I walked out to one of my favorite outdoor study places, a bench on the outskirts of campus that was pretty, but shady, and not a lot of foot traffic so you could read or write or think.
Sitting on the bench was an old man. As I got closer, I realized it was The Old Man, a physics professor who taught me mechanics and optics and an off-beat course he devised called "What's the Matter." He was hard on me, and there were times, many times, when I hated him. I was trying to get good grades, and he was trying to teach me how much I still had to learn.
I sat down next to him. "Good afternoon, Dr. Tyler," I said.
I didn't expect him to be so obviously afraid of me. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm Tim Ruppel," I say. "You probably don't remember me, but I was your student in the 80's. I'm a scientist now, you know."
"What do you want?" he asked. He was still afraid of me.
"Nothing, sir," I said. "I just wanted to tell you thank you and to find out how you are. It's been a long time."
A little bit of recognition showed on his face, but he was still frightened, and something else that scared me:
He looked confused.
Here was a man who could explain why glass is clear and sand is not, who had built dozens of classroom demonstrations out of little more than Army surplus stuff and some bits from the garbage, who had terrorized me and my classmates with exams that were so hard that we'd all wonder whether we were really cut out for physics, or science, or anything at all.
I remembered him angry and haughty and thrilled and excited, and even proud when he personally shook the hands of each student he ever taught at graduation.
"I remember you, Herr Ruppel," he said. He wasn't German, but it was a little quirk he had to use slip German words into conversation. "You are doing well?"
"Yes, sir," I said. "How is Der Alte Mann doing?"
Dr. Tyler used to call himself The Old Man, or it's German equivalent.
"I live in Memphis," he said. "I don't know how I got here."
"You are in Memphis," I said. "We're on campus, sir."
"Really?" he said. "It looks so different."
I talked with him of the old days, reminded him of some of the projects we accomplished while I was there, asked him about the times before I got there. Sometimes, he made sense, but sometimes he didn't.
Even when I hated him, I would not have wished this on him.
When I dream of this conversation, I wake in sweat.
Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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