Higher Learning

Higher Learning It was in my mid thirties when I got the bright idea of taking a few college courses to help jump/start my creative writing passion. Somehow I found myself taking things like algebra/trig, philosophy and sociology, to name a few courses. If it had not been for my fifth-grade son, a nice neighbor down the street, and a campus tutor, I would still be in algebra today. One semester I signed up for gym and asked a fellow student where the gym was. She gave me the generalized details and then said the usual “You can’t miss it.” “Want to bet?” I thought,” after roaming around campus for an hour. My sociology class, which I took because surely it would be easy, wasn’t. Back in the day there were no I pads or other tablets to make things a little easier to manipulate test booklets, so my professors gave my tests to me orally. This could be highly embarrassing when I did not know the answers. After my first midterm papers were handed out I turned around to the girl next to me and asked her what was the grade on my paper. She hesitated and almost whispered to me that it was a D. Next in that class we all went to the library to watch a classic movie which we were to be tested on afterward. The professor forgot the entire movie was in French with English captions. Another D. How was I going to pull a passing grade out of this class? Those of you who have taken a class in sociology may know of a time when you were given the assignment to do some deviant behavior. Most people in the class did things like trying to give away homemade cookies on the mall, or going into a fancy down town church with jeans on. Probably today people would be much more skeptical of a free cookie and jeans in a church might do nothing more than cause a frown to appear on the usher’s stiff face. I tried to talk my professor out of this assignment, assuring him that unintentionally I seem to do deviant things all the time, such as wearing one red and one black shoe shopping. He promised me an A if I could think of something extremely different to do. The largest and closest mall to me at that time was Crabtree Valley. I shopped there often, so often in fact that I knew it backward and forward. So, one day Kevin, Christi and I went to Crabtree. They were probably eight and eleven years old at the time, and could not believe their mom was going to walk down this mall backward. As I began my deviant walk they crossed the mall to the other side so no one could tell they ever knew me. Evidently people parted behind me to let me go smoothly on by and I heard some comments about the crazy woman walking backward. Over half-way through just as I got to the door of Footlocker, three boys jumped out and said: “Boo!” To be sure I got the A I walked down both sides of the mall backward so I could look across and see where I had just been. When I went to that other side Kevin and Christi changed too. Finally it was done and I was already thinking about how to write the paper as I phoned for a taxi. We all went outside Hudson Belk to wait. My head was spinning as I couldn’t get thoughts of that walk out of it, just as the cab pulled up. The children jumped in and I sat down. Once upon a time the Yellow Cab company had a few cabs with an extra large space in the back where you could put a very large parcel. This time the large parcel was me, as I finally realized I was sitting on the floor. We all started laughing, not only from my crazy walk, but because I sat on the floor until they told me to get in and sit down. This little incident was carefully written into my descriptive sociology paper as I had told the professor I did deviant behaviors all the time. And, yes, I got an A on the course.