Fruit Salad

A man with 93 years under his belt drove to the grocery store to quickly shake my hand because I’m back in town. I was taking the temperature of the fruit salad cooler (just in case it changed in the span of an hour) when I saw him stumble in, shaking off snow before noticing me. His name is Marcel, and despite his scrawny complexion, he’s got a lot of compassion tucked beneath the tan jacket. We’ve been exchanging letters back and forth after my grandfather’s funeral. Marcel is a dedicated member of the local parish, which entails him knowing my great aunt and uncle very personally. He often wrote recollections of the time spent with my great uncle at many operas, and then would continue to add his own personal critique of how a lot of the new musicals just aren’t for him.

I don’t know what made him eager to see me, and I’m not sure if we even talked for a full minute. The conversation consisted of him asking me why they gave me so much work this semester (I wrote too frequently about Lit courses), and how he’d been in the store earlier today to visit Bob who is just getting over a flu. Bob is a little closer to Marcel in age, only having a rough 20 years difference rather than my 70 year gap.

 

If the world were full of moments like this I think we’d write better books about it.

 

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The Bachelor’s Degree

One of my professors presented our class with a statistic that put things in an uncomfortable perspective for me. He said that only 19% of the United States has obtained a bachelor’s degree. From my standpoint, I don’t think you can measure intelligence with a college degree and I’m alarmed that anybody would consider themselves part of an elite through education. However, he told us this in response to an issue that occurred at the public forum, “Guns and the Law.” Most of our class was in attendance, and what we chose to discuss this morning was how two members of the audience ‘made a fool of themselves’ during the question and answer session. To clarify, they began talking in circles and started yelling at the panel with nobody able to identify with their argument. This is where the discourse began of organized thought and how most members of the public lack the ability to formulate critical thought. He said that it is our responsibility as the educated elite to utilize our time here and develop our critical thinking skills to participate in the dialogues of the real world.

I think that’s a lot of crap.

I think he meant this to be a contrast, showing his students the opposite of what scholarly perseverance might do. He even went as far as comparing critical thinking to sports, but once he used the word ‘elite,’ I began to disagree with the conversation. Clarity and purpose is something we all strive for, but it can probably be attained in more ways than a bachelor’s degree. In fact, I’m willing to argue that some are able to attain degrees while still lacking the ability process and argue information coherently. If an individual is passionate enough to get in front of a large panel and try to argue their understanding of constitutional interpretations, should we not be obligated to try to help the communication process?

When this happened, I laughed about it. Now thinking about what was lost as he handed one of the sound guys back the microphone, I believe it’s terrible.

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