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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
this is the beginning (though i dont have more yet) to something longer. ive been told the beginning of the beginning is a bit long. tell me what you think. (there may be some typos. whatever sounds cooler, thats what i meant to write.)
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The third floor seems deserted except for the occasional secretary with a manila folder in hand. One person, who I guess is a professor, nods as he passes me. I nod back, then push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. I look down at the piece of paper as if I don’t know the room number. 337. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen 330 and 334 but that was doors ago. I’ve turned down no less than four halls since then. The halls are a maze, yet I never hit a dead end. The fabled third floor is a metaphor for my life. I’ll never find what, or who, I’m looking for. Maybe that’s a bit heavy for a to-be freshman in college.
304. How did I get to 304? I see 306 and 308 and 310. The halls turns and I see room 324. What the hell? 326. 328. 330. I’m back to 330. Now 332, 334, 336, 338. Where’s 337? This damn place is like a Rubik’s cube. Once you believe you’re almost there you see one yellow square on the red side. You’ll have to start all over to get it right. I hold the piece of paper out in front of my face, as if it’s a compass. Maybe I’ve read the room number wrong a good ten times. But it still mocks me as I read, 337. Turn to the left, 340. Turn to the right, 339. Back up, 337. Holy shit. 337. And the door’s closed.
A plastic, gold colored plague reads: Dr. Fletcher. All around it are single frame comics. Most of them are The Far Side. In the middle of the door, pinned on top of the collogue of comics is a list of hand written names. The list is titled “Advising Meetings”. I check my watch. It’s 10:18. I follow my finger down the paper until it hits 10. 10:15. 10:30. My eyes go back up to 10:15 and my index finger drags to the right. I find Mendel Smith. I’m glad to find, after all this searching, confirmation I’m in the right place.
I tap proudly on my name. The door creaks open just a crack. The sound reminds me of a zombie movie I watched not too long ago so I brace myself for anything. I swallow hard as I push the door the rest of the way open.
There sits, who I can only guess is, Dr. Fletcher. He looks up, over the top of his glasses, and down his nose at me. He has the look of a man who didn’t want to be bothered. Then I see a piece of white tape holding the right side of his glasses together. What authority he was trying to convey is now muted.
“Come in. Come in,” he says, half-standing. His left hand pushes his glasses up the bridge of this nose while his right hand thrusts towards me. I shake it. I turn to close the door when he says, “Don’t close the door. Leave it about half way. We want our privacy, but we don’t need people thinking I’m molesting you.”
“Excuse me?” I swallow hard again.
“Do you know what your major will be?” he asks, answering my question with a question.
“No, not yet.” I wipe my palms down the front of my jeans.
Dr. Fletcher motions to the only chair on this side of his desk. “Sit down.”
I sit. This place is cluttered. And I thought his door was bad. The office is the size of a closet and packed much like one. He’s probably the kind of guy that says ‘a cluttered desk is the sign of a organized mind’ or ‘there’s a method to my madness.’ Those are only answers you give when you don’t have an answer.
“If you go into elementary ed., see, they teach you,” he pauses, “You want to go into elementary ed.?”
“Not really.”
“If you did you’d get told to never close your office door when you are meeting with a student. People think you’re molesting the kid.”
“Oh,” I kindly add to show him I’m paying attention.
Dr. Fletcher doesn’t seem to notice. He looks at a stack of papers on his desk and starts to shuffle through them. He adds, “Don’t you worry. I won’t diddle your pee-pee.” He looks up. The corner of his mouth smiles just slightly then snaps right back. I don’t know if what he said was a joke or a pick-up line. Either way it was a bad first impression. He looks back at his desk.
There are diplomas on the wall, pictures of family on the desk, and stacks of papers anywhere that can fit them. All this stuff seems like standard college professor affair. Except for the rocks on his desk. They are those huge, ugly rocks cut down the middle to show the purple or blue or yellow crystals inside. I’ve seen them before at the mall being sold as bookends. Dr. Fletcher has them crowning stacks of papers all over his desk. I count five. That’s five more than he needs, as if a stiff Atlantic breeze could whip in his nonexistent window any minute now.
Dr. Fletcher pulls a paper from the middle of the stack he was shuffling through. “There you are. Smith comma Mendel?” he asks, but doesn’t look up for an answer. After a moment he adds, “What kind of name is Mendel? And when does it get juxtaposed with something so plain as Smith?”
“It was my great uncle’s name.” I don’t know if he’s paying attention or asks questions solely to pacify me. “And Smith was Smithain, but someone told him it was too ethnic when he came over from Europe.”
“I’m glad to see your story has a name. Far too many names are from T.V. shows or sounded pretty, and that was it. All good things have a good story,” Dr. Fletcher says. For the first time he’s shown me some attention.
Now that we are over formalities, let’s get down to scheduling classes. Dr. Fletcher looks at the piece of paper, flips it over, and flips it back.
“Alright, Mendel, what do you want to do with your life? We have already crossed elementary teacher off the list. And I can’t blame you, those little twits.” He cracks another smile that quickly disappears.
“I don’t know.”
“Everyone wants to do something. It’s just that something usually won’t support your need for stuff. What did you want to do when you were younger and didn’t care about the money?” He’s now ignoring the papers and staring directly at me.
I gulp at the air. “When I was 14 I wanted to be an architect. Then I saw a documentary about college students studying to be architects, and that’s a lot of work. When I was 16 I was dead set on being a movie director. Maybe write and act in them too.”
“A one man show?”
“No, more like Woody Allen movies.”
“Yeah, a one man show.”
I laughed. He didn’t. I stop laughing.
Dr. Fletcher broke the silence, but continued with the uneasiness, when he said, “Why are you here? In college, that is.” I didn’t answer so he adds, “Don’t buy into all that liberal arts college bullshit. It’s propaganda. We don’t wear hiking boots and eat granola, taking weekend trips into the mountains to read Walden. Don’t expect to come out of here knowing anymore about yourself than your mother does. You’re parents are paying years of their retirement so you get a good paying job and pay them back. Soul searching is not on the curriculum.”
“Alright,” I add, part as agreement, part as a question.
“The ostrich. Everyone knows it sticks it’s head in the sand when it’s scared,” he continues. “That ostrich can ward off most of it’s predators with it’s legs. They might be scrawny, but they’re tough.”
“Alright,” I respond, almost like reflex.
“Don’t go through your college career as an ostrich. You can kick those classes ass.” He hands me the piece of paper he was looking at. Written in pen are four classes with my name and social security at top. “Go out this door, take a left, another left, and follow the hall until it gets dead ends. On your right will be the secretary, Ms. Gold. Bring back a copy with you.”
“Alright.” I walk out the door, go left, then left, then find Ms. Gold. Her office is twice the size of Dr. Fletcher’s. There is nothing on the floor and no clutter on the desk. Ms. Gold is a woman of around 45 years old. She looks up.
“Hello.”
“I’m supposed to give this to you.” I head her the paper. She punches a few keys on her computer. “Alright,” looking at the screen for confirmation, “Mendel. You are now scheduled in the first classes of your journey through college. How do you feel?”
“Fine? Dr. Fletcher says he needs a copy.”
“I know. He could do this himself, but it’s something about him not believing in computers. How can you not believe in something that is obviously there?” She pauses, “Don’t answer that, we may get into a philosophical debate. I don’t know you well enough to disagree with you just yet.”
The printer cracks on behind her. It makes line after line of shzzz noise as it prints two copies of my schedule. The printer cracks off and the papers drop into a tray. Ms. Gold leans back in her chair to get them.
“You have such a Jewish first name. Smith short for Smithain?”
“Yeah.”
She hands me the papers. “One for you and one for Dr. Fletcher.”
I take them.
She points at herself, “Goldberg.”
“Thank you,” I say and walk out the door, to the left, then right, and right again.
I hand Dr. Fletcher his copy. He stands up to reach the top of a stack of papers. He lifts the rock with purple crystals off of it and places the paper on top, replacing the rock.
Dr. Fletcher looks at me like he only then realized I walked in the room. “I know what you’re thinking. Weird guy. But there’s a method to my madness.” He shimmies around one side of his desk towards the doorway. I back up into the hall. “Alright. That does it. See me next semester.” He takes the list of names off his door, turns it around and pins it back up. He steps back into his office and closes the door. The sign reads: Napping.
I walk back in the direction of Ms. Gold’s office. I’m sure I saw stairs earlier. I take a left, another left, and there they are. Glorious stairs. I see Ms. Gold walking past with a file folder in her hand.
“Did he tell you that lame ostrich metaphor?” she asks. She continues walking, not really expecting an answer.
“Yeah,” I say softly as I walk down the stairs.
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The third floor seems deserted except for the occasional secretary with a manila folder in hand. One person, who I guess is a professor, nods as he passes me. I nod back, then push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. I look down at the piece of paper as if I don’t know the room number. 337. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen 330 and 334 but that was doors ago. I’ve turned down no less than four halls since then. The halls are a maze, yet I never hit a dead end. The fabled third floor is a metaphor for my life. I’ll never find what, or who, I’m looking for. Maybe that’s a bit heavy for a to-be freshman in college.
304. How did I get to 304? I see 306 and 308 and 310. The halls turns and I see room 324. What the hell? 326. 328. 330. I’m back to 330. Now 332, 334, 336, 338. Where’s 337? This damn place is like a Rubik’s cube. Once you believe you’re almost there you see one yellow square on the red side. You’ll have to start all over to get it right. I hold the piece of paper out in front of my face, as if it’s a compass. Maybe I’ve read the room number wrong a good ten times. But it still mocks me as I read, 337. Turn to the left, 340. Turn to the right, 339. Back up, 337. Holy shit. 337. And the door’s closed.
A plastic, gold colored plague reads: Dr. Fletcher. All around it are single frame comics. Most of them are The Far Side. In the middle of the door, pinned on top of the collogue of comics is a list of hand written names. The list is titled “Advising Meetings”. I check my watch. It’s 10:18. I follow my finger down the paper until it hits 10. 10:15. 10:30. My eyes go back up to 10:15 and my index finger drags to the right. I find Mendel Smith. I’m glad to find, after all this searching, confirmation I’m in the right place.
I tap proudly on my name. The door creaks open just a crack. The sound reminds me of a zombie movie I watched not too long ago so I brace myself for anything. I swallow hard as I push the door the rest of the way open.
There sits, who I can only guess is, Dr. Fletcher. He looks up, over the top of his glasses, and down his nose at me. He has the look of a man who didn’t want to be bothered. Then I see a piece of white tape holding the right side of his glasses together. What authority he was trying to convey is now muted.
“Come in. Come in,” he says, half-standing. His left hand pushes his glasses up the bridge of this nose while his right hand thrusts towards me. I shake it. I turn to close the door when he says, “Don’t close the door. Leave it about half way. We want our privacy, but we don’t need people thinking I’m molesting you.”
“Excuse me?” I swallow hard again.
“Do you know what your major will be?” he asks, answering my question with a question.
“No, not yet.” I wipe my palms down the front of my jeans.
Dr. Fletcher motions to the only chair on this side of his desk. “Sit down.”
I sit. This place is cluttered. And I thought his door was bad. The office is the size of a closet and packed much like one. He’s probably the kind of guy that says ‘a cluttered desk is the sign of a organized mind’ or ‘there’s a method to my madness.’ Those are only answers you give when you don’t have an answer.
“If you go into elementary ed., see, they teach you,” he pauses, “You want to go into elementary ed.?”
“Not really.”
“If you did you’d get told to never close your office door when you are meeting with a student. People think you’re molesting the kid.”
“Oh,” I kindly add to show him I’m paying attention.
Dr. Fletcher doesn’t seem to notice. He looks at a stack of papers on his desk and starts to shuffle through them. He adds, “Don’t you worry. I won’t diddle your pee-pee.” He looks up. The corner of his mouth smiles just slightly then snaps right back. I don’t know if what he said was a joke or a pick-up line. Either way it was a bad first impression. He looks back at his desk.
There are diplomas on the wall, pictures of family on the desk, and stacks of papers anywhere that can fit them. All this stuff seems like standard college professor affair. Except for the rocks on his desk. They are those huge, ugly rocks cut down the middle to show the purple or blue or yellow crystals inside. I’ve seen them before at the mall being sold as bookends. Dr. Fletcher has them crowning stacks of papers all over his desk. I count five. That’s five more than he needs, as if a stiff Atlantic breeze could whip in his nonexistent window any minute now.
Dr. Fletcher pulls a paper from the middle of the stack he was shuffling through. “There you are. Smith comma Mendel?” he asks, but doesn’t look up for an answer. After a moment he adds, “What kind of name is Mendel? And when does it get juxtaposed with something so plain as Smith?”
“It was my great uncle’s name.” I don’t know if he’s paying attention or asks questions solely to pacify me. “And Smith was Smithain, but someone told him it was too ethnic when he came over from Europe.”
“I’m glad to see your story has a name. Far too many names are from T.V. shows or sounded pretty, and that was it. All good things have a good story,” Dr. Fletcher says. For the first time he’s shown me some attention.
Now that we are over formalities, let’s get down to scheduling classes. Dr. Fletcher looks at the piece of paper, flips it over, and flips it back.
“Alright, Mendel, what do you want to do with your life? We have already crossed elementary teacher off the list. And I can’t blame you, those little twits.” He cracks another smile that quickly disappears.
“I don’t know.”
“Everyone wants to do something. It’s just that something usually won’t support your need for stuff. What did you want to do when you were younger and didn’t care about the money?” He’s now ignoring the papers and staring directly at me.
I gulp at the air. “When I was 14 I wanted to be an architect. Then I saw a documentary about college students studying to be architects, and that’s a lot of work. When I was 16 I was dead set on being a movie director. Maybe write and act in them too.”
“A one man show?”
“No, more like Woody Allen movies.”
“Yeah, a one man show.”
I laughed. He didn’t. I stop laughing.
Dr. Fletcher broke the silence, but continued with the uneasiness, when he said, “Why are you here? In college, that is.” I didn’t answer so he adds, “Don’t buy into all that liberal arts college bullshit. It’s propaganda. We don’t wear hiking boots and eat granola, taking weekend trips into the mountains to read Walden. Don’t expect to come out of here knowing anymore about yourself than your mother does. You’re parents are paying years of their retirement so you get a good paying job and pay them back. Soul searching is not on the curriculum.”
“Alright,” I add, part as agreement, part as a question.
“The ostrich. Everyone knows it sticks it’s head in the sand when it’s scared,” he continues. “That ostrich can ward off most of it’s predators with it’s legs. They might be scrawny, but they’re tough.”
“Alright,” I respond, almost like reflex.
“Don’t go through your college career as an ostrich. You can kick those classes ass.” He hands me the piece of paper he was looking at. Written in pen are four classes with my name and social security at top. “Go out this door, take a left, another left, and follow the hall until it gets dead ends. On your right will be the secretary, Ms. Gold. Bring back a copy with you.”
“Alright.” I walk out the door, go left, then left, then find Ms. Gold. Her office is twice the size of Dr. Fletcher’s. There is nothing on the floor and no clutter on the desk. Ms. Gold is a woman of around 45 years old. She looks up.
“Hello.”
“I’m supposed to give this to you.” I head her the paper. She punches a few keys on her computer. “Alright,” looking at the screen for confirmation, “Mendel. You are now scheduled in the first classes of your journey through college. How do you feel?”
“Fine? Dr. Fletcher says he needs a copy.”
“I know. He could do this himself, but it’s something about him not believing in computers. How can you not believe in something that is obviously there?” She pauses, “Don’t answer that, we may get into a philosophical debate. I don’t know you well enough to disagree with you just yet.”
The printer cracks on behind her. It makes line after line of shzzz noise as it prints two copies of my schedule. The printer cracks off and the papers drop into a tray. Ms. Gold leans back in her chair to get them.
“You have such a Jewish first name. Smith short for Smithain?”
“Yeah.”
She hands me the papers. “One for you and one for Dr. Fletcher.”
I take them.
She points at herself, “Goldberg.”
“Thank you,” I say and walk out the door, to the left, then right, and right again.
I hand Dr. Fletcher his copy. He stands up to reach the top of a stack of papers. He lifts the rock with purple crystals off of it and places the paper on top, replacing the rock.
Dr. Fletcher looks at me like he only then realized I walked in the room. “I know what you’re thinking. Weird guy. But there’s a method to my madness.” He shimmies around one side of his desk towards the doorway. I back up into the hall. “Alright. That does it. See me next semester.” He takes the list of names off his door, turns it around and pins it back up. He steps back into his office and closes the door. The sign reads: Napping.
I walk back in the direction of Ms. Gold’s office. I’m sure I saw stairs earlier. I take a left, another left, and there they are. Glorious stairs. I see Ms. Gold walking past with a file folder in her hand.
“Did he tell you that lame ostrich metaphor?” she asks. She continues walking, not really expecting an answer.
“Yeah,” I say softly as I walk down the stairs.
