the brookhaven community college is a beautiful, small campus staffed with great faculty - far greater, in my opinion, than all the state colleges i've attended. one day, after this one class, a handful of lingering students went out to lunch with the professor. this whole going-out- to-lunch thing with fellow students, off campus, and WITH the professor was kinda alien at that time in my life especially considering it was summer school.
we all sat in at a circular booth. the restaurant was a local oldie favorite, Pete's Cafe. the prof, a devote catholic who then recently started going to mass every morning, is a half-graying bearded man in his 50's or so. everybody else: a catholic male (whom i vaguely remember), a jewish male (paranoid of his Arab classmates), a muslim male (with a very rich father), a buddhist female (who oddly and readily admitted to having STD's), an athiest female (mentally quite a sharp one, as usual), and myself (a "presbyterian" at the time, and a male). needless to say, that was the most intellectually stimulating as well as the most fascinating and invigorating lunch-time conversation i've ever had. and it wasn't like the atmosphere was full of hate or finger-pointing or anything remotely deconstructive and silly like that. on the contrary, it was sheer pleasure. and of course "God" and "religion" and "theology" and the like all came up....that was inevitable. and it went on like this, almost always this same crowd, every day till the last day of class.
that was the year i learned to love History, and not to mention a desire to teach (the prof has this seriously contagious persona about him).
i don't consider myself a presbyterian anymore. actually i don't know exactly what i am. and i don't really seem to care to find out what to label myself anymore. it was always a stupid waste of time anyway the labeling business. stupid. very stupid. ahh those were the good old days of college, when every one of my friends were everything else but christian. i do miss that.
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