MY UNDERGRADUATE MAJOR IN COLLEGE WAS ENGLISH, but then I moved on to real life. I had real jobs dealing with real people. Not so my friend Maxwell, who never left the world of academia. He got his B.A., then he got his M.A., then he got his Ph.D. He became an English professor, his special area being Medieval Literature. Eventually, he became the head of the English Department at a large state university. He’s retired now, has been for a while, and on most days, a few hours following my solitary early AM walk, I go out again with Maxwell. My first walk is for the exercise; the second walk is for the company. But I have no interest in his guy Chaucer. He and I are usually feeding each other’s misgivings about the state of the country, discussing sports, or reminiscing about our real or pretended life’s adventures. We talk about books too, of course, which often is frustrating for me. I’ll say, I’m reading ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ by Dickens. Oh, I read that in high school, he’ll say. Or I’ll enthuse about the poetry of T. S. Eliot. Oh, I read him in high school, Maxwell tells me. So, now, if I mention something that I’m reading and he says nothing in response, I automatically assume that he read the damn thing in high school. And here I am, not getting to it until I’m over 80! It makes me question my teenaged priorities. Of course, I worked forty hours per week while I was in high school, so it’s a wonder that I ever graduated, let alone read any worthwhile literature. “Time and tide wait for no man” wrote Chaucer, so I guess I’m just playing catchup, which is better than falling further behind. Read on, MacDuff.

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