“Welcome to Intellectual History,” said Clara. She wore a high-necked black dress above which protruded a short white collar. Her shoes had thick buckles no one could see but which she told herself kept her anchored to the ground. She called the whole ensemble her “John Quincy Adams,” which made everyone in the department laugh except Clara herself, who was dead serious. She looked around the room. So many faces, so young. They were as yet uncreased with disappointment or for that matter even hope. They were just there, arguments for their own existence and nothing more. Most stared down into notebooks, scribbling rapidly. A few stared forward, bouncing a leg or tapping a pencil. Toward the back was the Continuing Education contingent. They were older than Clara, taking time off from jobs, from tending to laws and refinancing mortgages. She directed her comments to them to lower what she knew from experience would be the heat in the room. “What is Intellectual History? Is is our chance to encounter ideas that have overdressed by history and undress them.” She checked the response of students: Laughs from the young, dead eyes from the old, the usual. “Undressing an idea is like undressing a person. It can be frightening at first but is always at least a little exciting, and then there is the matter of reconciling what you think you know from what you discover. Finally there is the time alone, just the two of you.” She did not use a single contraction and everyone in the class, young and old, noticed intensely. A girl in the front row tapped her pencil too hard, at the wrong angle, and it launched from her hand and closed on Clara like an arrow. She did not move. There was always the chance of being pierced. That was the beauty of ideas.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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