sure, just divide by it and reduce…
I’ve been living on campus with Melody for an entire academic year now. In that time I’ve been keeping an eye out for an event - any event - that could be considered so rare as to be impossible to take place anywhere but a place like here. There’s been the occasional festival, protest, and random art placement - but that kind thing goes on at a wide variety of venues. No, I longed to see something more unique. Something definitively “college.”
Today I have been fulfilled.
Every day after lunch I walk across campus back home to the apartment. Today was no exception. There were the usual bike riders, car drivers, slow walkers, and power walkers out and about. I was lost in thought about something forgettable, striding down the sidewalk in no particular hurry, when the corner of my eye spied a car on the road slowing down to a stop. This was unusual so my attention was drawn.
On the other side of the road from me was a grey-bearded old professor-type getting waved over by the passenger of the car. As I entered earshot I could only hear the professor speak - and he was saying: “.. you just do delta X over Y, then reduce… yeah… set up the equation, plug in the variable… sure, just divide by it and reduce…”
This might not seem too dramatic, but try to picture this exchange taking place on the side of a public street on a nice April day. Birds chirping, insects flying, traffic zooming past. A car suddenly stops in the middle of the street to talk to a pedestrian about a math problem. This is the sort of thing that simply does not happen anywhere else. It’s just too improbable out in the “real world” - and it might even get you run over. But not here. Not on campus.
I can now feel free to leave one week from today content with my having experienced something that could only happen in a place like this.