Community College Memories

Santa Monica City College - 1998

He would get to class about five minutes late every week, after the rest of the class had settled into their desks, pulled out their notebooks, and were gathering their finished homework to turn in. The teacher, a good looking man probably not older than I am now, would have already started speaking to the class -- maybe calling roll or discussing with another student the reasons he was still not listed on said roll.

Just as the lecture started, this rogue student would open the door to the classroom - in fact, after a few weeks of this, we'd all wait with baited breath for the door to swing open...at least that's how I imagined it. He was large, probably nearing 400 pounds, and his trek to the only available seat - a small table at the very front of the classroom - was like a roll of thunder through an otherwise quiet sky.

I couldn't help but watch, none of us could - the teacher only barely ignoring him with what I imagine was all the restraint he could muster. He fascinated me because he didn't seem to give a shit that he was interrupting the entire class. He just trudged to the desk, which because of the smallness of the converted trailer classroom sat at an angle and almost faced the rest of the classroom, and with great sighs and groans, made himself comfortable.

He never took notes. He never turned in homework, in fact the teacher stopped asking for his assignments a few weeks into the semester. The part that flabbergasted me the most, the thing that still makes me think of him to this day, is the smell of his feet. As soon as he heaved himself into his chair, he'd slip his dinner-plate-sized feet out of his beaten and battered Birkenstocks and the room would fill with the odor of his worn and neglected feet. I'd stare at them for most of hour and a half long class, the lack of ventilation or even a functioning window in the classroom causing the smell not to dissipate, but to strengthen in it all-consuming power.

Please don't think I'm making fun of this man. I was fascinated by him, and saw him as some sort of fallen god whose punishment was to endure a entry-level community college class with us mortals. I wanted to talk to him. I was dying to know where he went everyday after class, what his home looked like, what his career aspirations were and if he knew that he had become this king in our classroom of just-out-of-high-school students who had signed up for Psychology 101 and for the entire semester had been diagnosing themselves with every mental disease in our standard-issue textbook while he held barefooted court over us from the front of the room.

I wonder how'd he feel to know that I think of him and that Psych 101 class every time I get a whiff of stinky feet, over ten years later. I can't help but think that he'd be happy with himself. He just had that aura about him.