Professors

 Professors 
     by D R. (Herr Doktor)

Professors come back from wherever they’ve been (in Macedonia for a conference on cuneiforms, at a conference in Key West because of a resurgence of interest in all things Hemingway or in Sweden attending a sacred music workshop), tanned and determined to repeat such travels (on the university dime) again next summer. They notice the long-legged students in their classes smelling of bath powder. Of course, I am too old for them, the professors say to themselves, but also think, I am, however, interesting. Consider the shear daring and distance of my travels. 
     Professors perpetually work at their computers, their office doors open. Take professor Hackles here. He’s always in front of his screen and keyboard busy doing something, visible to all passers by. Now and then he stops keyboarding and engages in a discussion with a student, or maybe with a colleague passing his door. In these instances, though his observed voice naturally is quite soft, it now takes on the cadences of authority. Usually, alone, he is a rather silent and shy, but, because public here, he now gives out with loudness punctuated by strongly stated phrases such as, “you know what I mean,” “without question,” “an egregious failure of the imagination” and “does that help?”
     He will retire in two years. He sports a tan even now, in February. Moving about now and then, his slim figure presses forward down the hall with purpose. He invariably climbs the six floors of stairs to his office. His white hair makes him resemble Walt Whitman. He teaches Romantic literature. His door proclaims that he is,
                 Dr. Gregory Happles
                           English
Underneath that the posted timetable reads,
            Romantic Literature 04.446
                  Wordsworth 04.746
     Professors and their wives give parties in their cold (in winter) three-storied, hundred-year-old homes for students in second year or later. They provide quality wine and imported beer if the group does not exceed ten. Or, if they are Cambridge or Oxford educated professors, they serve homemade wine and beer.