Meeting My Teacher
WITH MY LAST HOPE DASHED...
I was just about to sulk back to my dorm room defeated and deflated. Then, out of the corner of my eye, in the opposite corner of the huge room, I noticed an interesting looking older gentleman having a lively chat with a trio of undergrads.
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After having scoured (to no avail) the stack of biographies trumpeting the educational credo, blue ribbon achievements and leisure predilections of the various other mentors available to us in the program, for some strange reason, I felt a real connection with this guy and the manner in which he was relating to the students across the room.
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He had a distinguished air about him, but at the same time seemed very approachable. He was engaged, animated and quite tall. I figured that before I gave up and hightailed it out of there, I should at least walk across the room on the off chance that he could help me design the kind of independent study program that might ward off enough of the stultifying boredom that was pushing me ever closer to leaving school for good.
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BUT HERE'S WHERE IT GETS FREAKY...
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We were catty corner from each other across the huge gymnasium, perhaps a 100 feet or so apart, and as I walked towards him my eyes seemed to be playing a strange trick on me.
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Step by step by step, the tall gentleman that I had been observing from across the room, kept getting shorter & shorter & shorter & shorter until, when I finally arrived and we were shaking hands, face to face, I suddenly realized...
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HE WAS ACTUALLY SHORTER THAN I WAS!
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"Hello" he said in a deep voice accompanied by a warm and gracious smile. "I'm Frank Pierce Jones".
To be continued…