Hey There Underdog

You Win the Bride / Astropuppees












No one actually liked Professor Arnold or his Intro class. His classes filled for two simple reasons. One he drew the preferred time slot of 1:00-2:30 Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was a good time as it was late enough in the day to sleep in, but not so late as to interfere with evening plans. Therefore, if you wanted to actually try to attend a class and maybe get that GPA to reasonable, this was your choice.



Second, the class was a stadium seating auditorium with 120 others. As one of the many baseball hat wearing, pony tail flicking, flannel, denim or sweat suited youth, you were a number, nothing more. Don’t ask a question, sit in different seats and you didn’t even have to make it to that Thursday afternoon and you’d still do fine.


Of course, this didn’t stop Professor Arnold from his well rehearsed first day speech. “You all forget that I am standing here looking out at all of you. I can see each and every one of you. I know if you’re paying attention. I know if you’re taking notes. I know if you’re looking down the shirt of the girl in front of you…” It went on for twenty minutes. “So you all best better remember …”


It was all well and good that his opening day speech professed this attention, the truth was, he didn’t know his students. He couldn’t. All but the scared freshmen figured this out pretty quickly.


Annie sat listening to this speech for the third semester. She was Professor Arnold’s “teaching assistant,” which really meant slave, at least in his mind. “It’s money. It’s money. It’s money.” She wrote in her notebook as he droned on.


“You can’t hide behind your baseball cap, I know each and every one of you…”


The last semester the man had actually called her at home at 7:00 pm to yell at her that she wasn’t in her on campus office. He had just finished his grades and wanted her to enter them in the computer. After he had demanded to know why she was home, and she had explained that her office hours, the hours she worked for him on that day were 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM and she was not driving the thirty minutes in to enter his grades, though she’d be happy to do it the next day during her work hours. He had called her incompetent and hung up on her.


“It’s rent. It’s food.” Her notes switched as she occasionally glanced up as if she were actually taking notes on this crap as he had instructed her to each of the past three semesters.


When this got old, Annie started to gaze at the students in the room. Most looked alike. She was looking for one in particular, though. They had gotten a memo from some office on campus announcing that this class would have a blind student. Professor Arnold had passed the memo on to Annie. It would of course fall to her to provide notes, clarification, running between offices, etc. anything that might be needed.


The student was easy to find. She sat front row center. She was clearly blind, her dark glasses out of place in the dull room, but she was beautiful. She was a young woman with gorgeous blonde hair, slender and dressed with impeccable neatness in a well coordinated outfit. An equally beautiful German Shepard sat calmly underneath her seat panting in the heat of the room. She sat in the front row, a tape recorder in her lap.


At the end of class, there was no one left in the room who did not notice this student. She attracted the attention of every male. The dog attracted the attention of every female. Well, Annie thought, at least this will be interesting to watch.


The second day of class, Annie watched with amusement as, again, every young man was keen to help this young woman, while every young woman seemed to be in love with her dog. It was quite a commotion as she took her seat front row center, set up her tape recorder, explained what it was to her neighbors, settled her dog under the seat.


At the stroke of 1:00, Professor Arnold began his lecture. Annie again pretended to take notes. Not only did she know the material, but it was verbatim the same lecture she’d heard last semester. And the semester before that.


Not long in the blind woman raised her hand. Nothing. She eventually gave up. A little while later, her hand went up again. She was ignored. Annie sighed. This was not uncommon either. Still later, the young woman’s arm rose again, this time, she called out in a clear voice, “Excuse me, Professor?”


Suddenly there was no rustle of squirm. All were silent. All alert.


“What?” Professor Arnold turned, the annoyance in his voice.


“Excuse me Professor, I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind if you are writing terminology on the board to spell it out as you go?” She asked politely.


“What’s the matter, can’t you see it from there?” Professor Arnold asked snidely.


120 bodies took a sharp inhale of breath and froze.


“No, as a matter of fact I can’t.” The woman answered just as sweetly and without missing a beat.



Post Script: True story. Names have been changed as after my second year of working for this man, I started to check in with friends and alibi myself whereever I went because I was afraid if he met with an unnatural death I'd be a suspect. Three years after this I heard he developed an illness that amoung other things caused him to go blind.