Disarmed With a Smile

It was going to be a long day. I knew that before it had ever even started. I went to bed the night before dreading the massive amount of "to do's" on my imagined list within my mind. It seems strange but my body must have somehow adapted to the few hours of sleep I manage to scrape from each night. I had only slept two hours when I woke from a strange dream. I couldn't go back to sleep so I just laid in bed irritated as the minutes until my alarm blared came closer and closer. I finally gave up waiting for my alarm to test my patience and just got up and ready for class. It was cold out which was no surprise, it's always disturbingly cold out here. I walked to class quickly but then stopped in the library. I was almost 20 minutes early so I decided to sit in one of the nice chairs they provide for people to gawk at others walking by.

There are only 2 kinds of people that walk by that early in the morning on their way to class. There are the dedicated, all-hands-on-deck students that would have a "Led Zepplin in a nice hotel on a Saturday night" style breakdown if they were late to class or missed an assignment... and then there are the stoic, zombie-faced kids that still can't define economics because they don't realize that's the name of their class they are attending so insanely early every morning. I don't like to categorize myself so I won't try to fit myself into either category, it would just be unfair.

It turns out that sculpture class is really quite boring when you don't have a sculpture to work on. I decided about midway through the class period to bail after filling approximately 3 pages worth of doodles. I made like the French hearing the sounds of conflict and ran out of there like a madman. After my retreat I headed to Illustration. I had only been in class a few minutes when my professor called me out and said... "I need to talk to you."

My heart sank. Captain, crew, ship, all of it.

He pulled me out into the hall to have a discussion. I tried to think of how many people I'd hit with my car lately or if I'd prank called anyone lately like in the 90's.... I couldn't think of any possible reason for this sidebar. Once in the hall he again said, " I've been meaning to talk to you." "Me?" I asked. He then asked, "You turned in the Dropkick Murphy's poster for your personal exploration assignment right?"
Oh yeah... I did do that. It was an assignment where we submitted illustrations we liked and were inspired by. I didn't think there was any problem with what I'd submitted, but then here I was.

It turns out my teacher used to be quite the fan of punk rock, and so he called me out into the hall to secretly discuss a former passion of his. We talked about different shows we'd been to and bands we liked, all while my fellow students were in class and having to read some random article. We talked for around 10 minutes before he decided it was probably time to really start class. I went from having a heart attack to having my heart warmed and finding a friend in my teacher who I would never had guessed had much of anything in common with me. Punk rock, bringing people together who can't stand other people.