sesquipedalien

It was a boiling 1o7 degrees with an equally oven breathed wind stirring up construction dust outside. The conditioned air, a gentle shock to the homeostatic status of the skin.

I have a habit of sitting at the front of the lecture room.

From day one, it was evident to me I was going to be suffering. Oh the numbers and concepts and all the scientific jargon that was to be swallowed was perfectly edible to my poor, uninterested brain. That is a different distress altogether anyway.

But this…

I have a habit of Googling my professors. It is not to ridicule as much as it is to respect. To gain some sort of appreciation (or none) of the person who was going to be preaching for the next 16 weeks of some subset of their personal expertise. Most times, it’s fascinating to see where these minds had started and what maya bound stages they had climbed to be at present.

I knew enough about this late-middle aged, head shaved, glasses donned, Nike shirted, strap sandaled individual that first time.

“Hello.”

It ground through a mill of his mother tongue, the letters, grains too alienated to be finely revealed.

To this day, I have never heard the word “cosine” so uniquely slain.

It is frustrating, I’ll grant you. It is hard to learn when you have a TA or Professor that has difficulty in communicating something that is going to earn you points on the next exam, thus pass the class, and thus hold that glossed diploma at the end. It is harder still when the topic being taught is something of another language itself: Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Organics… subjects which the last English speaking generation seem to have greatly missed (and perhaps will keep missing).

Still.

This is worse.

To behold a world class expert of a subject so rarely brought out and up in this society struggle with not the understanding, the capability or vision. No. Oh no. He has it all. It’s stored there in his brilliance. It’s the right hand of his being. It’s the damn passion behind his spectacles.

No.

Not that. But this.

English.

Stuttering. Hesitating. Looking down with his eyes closed, his wedding ring grazing the naked head often.

Waiting for the perfect word to come capture his intelligence and cast it to the world.

And knowing that the tittering in the background was addressed to him and only him.

Oh the agony of sitting there.

Of observing. The humbling.

The humbling of an already humbled soul.

By a crowd of ignorant ones.

It was always around 107 degrees with a furnace wind.

The open toes were usually freezing by the end.

Numbed.