I
1965, first day of seventh grade, new teacher, Mr. Pappert. He was deciding what to give us for homework: English or Math. He settled on English. Our assignment was to find an English word of eight letters that had only one vowel.
In my best Jerry Mathers voice, I said, “Sir, is it strength?” “Why, yes it is,” he replied. “Fiddlesticks, I have to find some math problems.” This provoked outrage in the classroom, all directed at me. “Elden!” they cried, in tones that suggested they knew I was going to do that. Some of them were still writing the assignment down in their little green notebooks.
II
1995. My evening Evidence class had not done well explaining Adams v. Baker and Charlie v. Delta. The professor, Dr. Hornstein, was not pleased with us, and warned us all about showing up in class the next time without knowing Echo v. Foxtrot and Giant v. Hawaii backwards and forwards. That day came, and as he started the class, Professor Hornstein said, “We’ll get to cases in a minute, but first I would like to read something I read on the Internet today that I think will amuse you.” It was a story about the whale that had washed up on the beach in Oregon, and I interrupted his reading to say, “Oh yeah, that’s when ODOT decided to get rid of it by blowing it up with dynamite, and wrecked a couple of cars in the process.” He stopped reading, and turned to me with an expression guaranteed to curdle milk, and asked if he could continue. “Sure, go ahead,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” He did, but the moment was lost, and it was his turn for charity titters.
Then he turned fully to me, arms akimbo, and the other students were edging away from me so they didn’t get caught in the crossfire. “Mr. Carnahan,” he said. “Do you have time to surf the Internet after doing all the reading for this class?” As it happened, I did—part of my job at NSA in those days was to survey parts of the Internet that might contain information useful to our analysts. So I replied, “Why, yes I do.” “Good,” he answered. “So you can tell us all about Echo v. Foxtrot, and then you will do Giant v. Hawaii as well.”
Days of Wine and Roses, and Vasectomies 
Leave a reply to annapmagistra Cancel reply