November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

The Riddle in the Front Row

(Page 3 of 3)

September-October 2008
by M. Garrett Bauman, from the Chronicle of Higher Education 
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He waited patiently to be dismissed, like a horse at the pasture gate. Without knowing why exactly, only wanting to prolong the opportunity for intimacy, I asked, “What do you think about when you go away during class?”

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He snapped to attention. “Huh?”

“When you daydream in class, what do you see and hear?”

He seemed unnerved at this rattling of the door of his happy refuge. Did he give inaugural speeches, rescue fair damsels, cure cancer there? I had no right to invade his private place. While most other students blithely spill their lives in papers and discussion, nothing emotional ever emerged from Keenan beyond his blissful grin during reveries. I needed a clue to his inner life, so I could help him. So I could like him.

He said, “Do I have to tell you?

I could demand his secret, for he obeyed authority. I’m not sure if I hesitated from a sense of fair play, from professorial ego, or from fear that he would expose a secret I could not handle. He needed his refuge; could education replace it? Could I really connect him to the college community? I replied, “No, you don’t have to.”

“Can I go?” His eyebrows twitched until I nodded. Then he escaped—and so did I.

 

M. Garrett Bauman is the author of Ideas and Details: A Guide to College Writing (sixth edition, Thomson Wadsworth, 2007). Reprinted from the Chronicle of Higher Education(May 23, 2008), the 2007 Utne Independent Press Award winner in the category of political coverage; www.chronicle.com.

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