Professor, I like you. Actually, I love you!

As usual this semester, I am encouraging my students to email me if they have questions or would like to stop by for my office hour.  Many take my advice, others I don't hear from at all, except toward the end of the semester, when they show up in my office, looking like they just saw a ghost.  One such student is "Gary". Gary has been in contact with me at least once a week.  He is a good student, he's gregarious and really likes to chat after class.  He likes to email me about questions concerning the readings, cultural misunderstandings he goes through, writing issues, the list really is endless.  He's a communicator. I like that.

He emailed me last week to let me know that he let me down and that he felt terrible about it when he couldn't answer a question concerning analytical ideas in class.  That's when he dropped this interesting phrase.  "Professor, I don't want to let you down, I like you. Actually, I love you. I love you a lot.  I want you to know".  Hmmmm....now a phrase like that would get most people thinking what is going on here?
Not me, this is normal language stuff.  Happens to me all the time.  When people are learning a language and have not acquired it, they tend to write things that would normally raise eyebrows.  The problem is, my eyebrows cannot be raised anymore, I've heard it all. 

I emailed him back "Hi Gary, thanks for the email. I appreciate that you feel that you did not perform to the best of your ability yesterday in class.  Remember, we are learning and this is part of the learning process.
Thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability to teach the material well. 

I hit send and sit back and think of all the dumb and slightly psychotic sentences I have stitched together and let them sail out of my big mouth.   I laugh to myself and think, hey, this is language!

This girl can't be a professor, or can she?

I am very fortunate this semester to have class  near a coffee shop. I have the luxury of pulling up and jumping off my scooter just a few minutes before class, grabbing a cup of coffee and feeling pretty good about myself.  As luck would have it, I was pulling up one morning this past week to an empty meter that had my name all over it. I jumped off my bike and noticed a BU police officer on the other side of the road.  I chose to ignore the fact that the said police officer was now on his way over, across the street, looking very purposeful, heading in my direction. 

As I was wrapping my chain around the meter, he pulled up along side of me and said, "Excuse me miss, do you have a sticker on the scooter?". "Yes, every two years I have to renew it".  He looked grumpy, his face was covered with a thick moustache and great gray eyes that didn't have a spec of kindness to them.  I continued on locking up my bike.  "You know, you can't park that scooter in the street," he added with a stern bark. "Yes, I know, that's why I park it on the sidewalk".  "Scooters are very dangerous, in fact, most kids who drive them really don't know what they are doing," he chimed. He continued to go on and on about how dangerous they were, how many "kids" have no idea how to drive them. Then, he asked if I had a license.  I looked at him with a confused knitted brow "Yes, I have a license! I have had one since I've been sixteen". "Well, he said, its only been a few years and you had better beware on that thing."

A few years? Was this guy nuts? As if the fates got tired of watching this guy yank my chain, two of my students rounded the corner. "Oh good morning professor!" "Good morning guys," I said right back.  It was just then I noticed the cops face.  His face had this shocked look of unbelief and of something else I wasn't able to assess at that moment.  He sheepishly looked down and asked quietly, "are you a professor?" Yes, I said, have been for five years". "What is it you teach". "I teach writing, I specialized in academic writing. I could hear him cringing.  "My name is Pat, Pat Nunnati, and what is your name, young lady?" My name is Diana, I stated.  "You know, I love to write, I'm not so good at it, but I do love it". "That's great" I said.  "Listen, I'm sorry about the scooter thing, I thought you were a kid." "Oh, I'm no kid" I said with a forgiving smile on my face.  I shook his hand to let him know that there was no hard feelings. As I was walking away from him, he shouted out "you know, if you'd like to get together later for a coffee, I'd really enjoy that".
I waved as I disappeared into the building.  As I climbed the stairs I thought to myself, a kid, yeah, right!