Philosophy Classes Attract The Worst People

Or they spawn under the handicap ramp outside the door...

Your shirt reads, "I'm out of my mind, please leave a message." I'd like, first of all, to thank you for the service to the public that you're doing by wearing that. If someone approaching you for the first time might, somehow, through glare on a windshield, a solar flare, a cataract, or otherwise mistake you for an intelligent human being, they'll quickly be made aware of their folly upon reading that brilliant little tidbit of information emblazoned across your chest. This minuscule social contribution, however, certainly doesn't negate the rest of the plethora of annoyances you perpetrate.

You are certainly not hard to miss, waddling your way into class, no earlier than 15 minutes late, every day, to your "desk" at the front of the class. I admire the professor's complacency in permitting you to flop your brightly colored rolling backpack on the corner of their desk; knowing full-well the stream of aimless question/statements that will be plunked awkwardly outwards, accompanied only by a dull stare and a hint of indignation. Your sprawl continues outwards incorporating not one, but two chairs to support your right leg which needs to be elevated constantly to alleviate what can only be a severe case of diabetic peripheral neuropathy. The case for diabetes certainly isn't helped by the snack bar worthy candy selection you unload from your backpack which you will line up and devour over the course of the class with almost as much regularity as your walking cane colliding with the overhead projector. Laying it on the ground would be way too easy, I suppose.

Once you're finally settled into your front of the class, borderline exhibitionist, legs open, fupa dangling position is when the real fun begins. When you're not overtly checking your cellphone for the text messages that I'm certain aren't there, you start the squinting. It's almost as if there is a connection between your eyes squinting and your jaw dropping, struggling to form that phrase that precludes every interjection you dump forth, "Could it also be..."

No. It is not also that. It has never been, and at no point in the foreseeable future will it ever be anything that you feel relates to the discussion of the rest of the class. The divergence between the suggestions you attempt to provide and the actual topic is so striking it will even occasionally bring our poor professor to a halt. It's like a super power, you are like a vacuum of reasonable thought that can somehow take a delightfully meandering discussion on relative ethics to some dark cave devoid of context and filled with misused words and Reese's Pieces with nothing but the display of dimpled elbows ominously flopping that pink hand into the air directly in front of the professor's face.

Also, someone drew a Stussy "S" with a jester hat on the projector... today... in 2009...

Thanks for making another class almost intolerable. I'm crossing my fingers to get a chance to send a bouquet to your bedside when you're resting in a diabetic coma and you can't wrestle your way through the door to plague us all with your existence.