Yeah, I’m a dork.
I mean, I know this — I tell my students that a professor is simply a geek who has given up his or her amateur standing. Nonetheless, I occasionally give myself reminders that flood me with self-awareness, and perhaps a tinge of abashment.
Take this morning, for instance. My Seven Deadlies class was finishing up Castle of Perseverance today, but when I got to my office, I realized (a few minutes before class) that I had left my copy of the play at home. “Fine,” I thought. “I’ll just use my EETS edition while I lecture.” Except a quick survey of my office shelves failed to turn it up, and time was running short.
So I grabbed my less portable copy of David Bevington’s Medieval Drama, which also includes the text of the play, and made it through my lecture without much of a hitch (except for occasional differences in line numbering.) Still, as I lugged the tome to the classroom, I asked myself, “What kind of person has three different texts of The Castle of Perseverance?” But I knew the answer.
Suddenly, I’m afraid to count my copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, lest I be compelled to take my own lunch money.
I had to give up many 2nd or 3rd copies of books I’d owned through the years. I had to dispose of them to make room for new books… It was still very hard.