Kooky Professors

Speaking of kooky poli sci professors and sitting in the front of class, I remember a favorite story from my days at CSUN years ago. My dad, see, was a poli sci prof while I was a coed there. I took two of his classes. Naturally. He was a great prof. No, really, he was. I can remember around registration time, you could hear whispers in the hallways of the poli sci department: Take Beller, he's the best. So, yes, I took his class. We secretly agreed to change my last name for the class, and none of the students knew my undercover identity.

Those were my triathlon days, and my boyfriend and I rode our bikes to campus. I swam at school. One semester I took Poli Sci 156, and swam before class. The chlorine from the pool always made my nose run terribly. It was so annoying, that watery distraction tickling my upper lip, as I would sit in rapt attention to Dr. Beller's colorfully animated lectures, sucking up his profound wisdom like a dry loofah.

At the end of every week, we would always take our suits home to wash the chlorine out. I always wrapped mine in my scratchy white gym towel, and carried it with me tied to my backpack until I got home. During one lecture, my runny nose was particularly pestilent. I was sniffling and snorting and it wasn't doing any good; the water was running like a busted faucet. It was so annoying. Still, I refused to budge from my front-row perch to escape to the hallway, where I might blow the chloriney liquid away for good. Unable to control the leaky Kohler that was my nose, I desperately grabbed my towel and wiped, thus averting a disastrous scene.

That was it. Silly me. Dr. Beller--Dad--in a great show of drama, stopped his lecture mid-sentence, his emphatically gesturing arms suddenly frozen. He made a dramatic, sweeping motion to turn and glare at me. "Good god!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Did you just wipe your nose with that towel?!"

I stared back at him, stunned, my face turning a hot shade of burgundy. The entire class gasped in unison, horrified. "Ohhh! Dr. Bellerrrrr!" they cried. How mean!

I got an "A" in class. And no, I didn't cheat. It was all scan-trons.

I Love Art

So, I have this prof, see, for my art history class. I'll call him Dr. D. He's crazy. He's passionate. He teaches art history, political science, and western civ. Go figure. I couldn't imagine taking his poli sci class. He speaks in riddles and metaphor, and when he wants you to write down a word he repeats it exactly three times, his voice rising one octave on each repetition. Like this: "art, art, ARRRT!" It's a lyrical melody I know by heart now. He gestures wildly with his arms, and beats on his chest when he wants to make a point. He gets so feverish as he flails that he knocks his papers or books, or whatever is in front of him, on the floor at least once every class period. I heard his textbooks only last one semester.

He gets in your face. He challenges you with weird questions. He gets so excited he spits. Bummer, because I like to sit in the front. One day he brought donuts for the class, two big greasy-pink boxes. At the end of the lecture he asked if anyone wanted the last three donuts: "I didn't spit on them, I promise," he said. "Well, only once." We roared, only because we knew it was true.

One of his favorite paintings is "The Scream," by Edvard Munch. He likes to open the text, hold it up in front of him, and smack the page where the painting he is discussing is located. One day he did that, he grabbed some poor coed's text off her desk in a moment of passion and, holding it to his chest, smacked the pages until they were crumpled. The poor girl. Yeah, he forgot to give her book back, too. Dr. D gets so excited, he yells, usually directly at one student. No one seems to know quite how to react, and yet he is loved--adored--by his groupies. He takes his groupies, anyone who wants to go, on field trips to see art exhibits and concerts. I'm signed up to go this Saturday.

No one took the three donuts.