Even stranger and more perverse as it must seem, however, the third young man, even after observing the silly and unreasonable behavior of his date, even after seeing her soaked to the skin, her gown ruined, her hair plastered against her neck, her mascara running down her cheeks in little inky rivulets—even after observing all this, not only was he seen escorting her frequently to other entertainments, but eventually he offered her a ring.
The History of Professor De Laix
The world had long been promised a fifty-volume definitive analysis on the meaning of life by the brilliant and internationally respected Professor de Laix. Admirers from all across the surface of the earth produced unremitting and enthusiastic requests—nay, demands—for the wise professor to bestow upon the world his penetrating insights into human nature. As the years passed, however, even though he had been begged repeatedly for the first part, or a first volume, or even a first chapter, he had always answered that he wanted to get the whole work clearly in his head before he put it down on paper.
"To rush precipitously forward without knowing precisely where one wants to go," he would tell them, "will not of necessity produce a happy outcome because it might lead to a complicative erroneity or put one on a train to a destination he would not ultimately wish to visit. After all, the most beautiful part of a given day is known only after dark, and the best path up the mountain—which I take to be the path of true wisdom—is seen only from the top."
Year after year, therefore, arrived with hope and left disappointed; new generations were born and millions of hopeful readers mingled their own dust with that of the earth without the benefit of even a phrase of Professor de Laix' wisdom.
Then one spring his colleagues and students noticed that he was gradually becoming more and more animated, and was heard occasionally to mutter, "Yes, yes, that's right, that's right." Finally one day while he was sitting in a coffee shop regaling a few favorite students with tales of fruitless thinking journeys upon which he had in the past embarked, he took a sip of coffee (or perhaps he had inadvertently been served espresso) and then suddenly opened his eyes widely, sprang to his feet, and announced excitedly, "That's it! I see it all now! Now it can be written! Everything is completely clear! So clear! Ha ha! Now I understand! Now, at last, I understand!"
After this brief speech, he burst out of the coffee shop (leaving his students with expressions of amazement and an unpaid bill) and began to run toward his office where he could finally sit down and produce his great work. Now at last he could pour forth his hitherto inexpressible wisdom to fertilize the orchards of culture and bring into being a new and wonderful fruit for civilization to munch upon.
Unfortunately, in his highly focused and externally oblivious rush toward his office, he neglected to watch for the traffic as he crossed the busy boulevard between the coffee shop and the university (for academia is often separated from the rest of life by just such a metaphor), and as a result he was tragically but thoroughly run down by a fully loaded manure truck, whose cargo had been produced after only one day's rumination, and whose owner also hoped that it would swell the fruit on the trees of a less figurative orchard.
Such was the life and death of the great Professor de Laix, a man for whom someday almost came.
How the Humans Finally Learned to Like Themselves