Welcome back!

I delivered my first lecture of the Spring quarter today. Following my lecture, I was sitting in my office minding my own business, planning the rest of my day, when a young man walked in and greeted me as if I were a long-lost friend.

It took about 100 microseconds for me to determine that something was very wrong. At 10:30 a.m., he was slurring his words, behaving erratically, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and he smelled as if he had consumed a liter of Scope, both by drinking it and pouring it on his clothes.

He asked about a class I do not teach. He asked if I ever taught it; I said no. I (gleefully) sent him down the hall to speak to my colleague who does teach it. When I left for brownbag some minutes later, he was sitting in the lobby. I walked past him briskly, and pretended not to hear him slurring out my first name: "Angruh... Ahgruh..."

The end of brownbag found him still in the lobby, asleep with his head on a trashcan. Some time later he disappeared but his bookbag did not. He abandoned it in the middle of the hall. I sent a colleague into the men's room to make sure the kid hadn't passed out in there, but he was nowhere to be found.

I thought the afternoon would be more interesting if we called the Kampus Kops and told them a suspicious person had abandoned a package in the building, but my secretary merely gave me a dirty look and called someone to pick up the bookbag and take it to Central lost and found.