As I lie in difficulty getting to sleep, clearing my mind, a memory from the Winter of 2000 crept into my mind. It certainly would have been blogged about if I had such the medium back in the day.
History of Christian Thought was one of my more difficult classes as Marquette University. It was a third-level theology class. I needed 9 credits in Theology to attain my degree, but you could not just churn out three easy classes. This class was a requirement, and you had to pass a 2nd level course to get into one of this variety. However, it was one of my more rewarding classes. And I wouldn't mind to go back and audit the class (if I could get the same professor and the bank account to afford me the opportunity to take classes for the sole purpose of knowledge). The entire class was about the process of how the Catholic Catechism was founded. How after Jesus died all the Gnostics and Prophets and Politicians argued and debated their way though councils and movements. How Ignatius earned his street cred and why Augustine would be a first round pick in any Fantasy Theologian League. It's too bad that millions upon millions have read The DiVinci Code without having a class like History of Christian Thought to round out the edges.
However none of the class' merits remain as my most vivid memory. Sadly the magnificent conversion of Augustine of Hippo by Ambrose of Milan will take a back seat to something I casually overheard one day in early December 2000.
A girl was talking to the girl next to her a row behind me. The girls were two and three seats over from my position in the room's theoretical X-Axis. The girl farthest away from me was telling her, I'm guessing close friend, of a boy she met a couple days earlier at a party up on the East Side.
I should note that the East Side (apart from downtown, where the campus of Marquette lies) is home to the more hip and cool people. I've often told others that the East Side is where young people drink coffee because they actually like it and where couples go to watch foreign independent films of young French boys in love.
I should probably stop referring to the person telling the following story as a girl, and as the person she met as a boy because this is a tale of hardcore sex with strangers.
By the way, Happy Valentine's Day everybody.
It became painfully obvious that the people behind me were talking about sex. Also obvious was the confirmation in my mind that women hold no secrets between themselves - and transmit their secrets in code incapable of deciphering by one with a Y chromosome.
Most importantly, this was all occurring in the moments before class began - causing much background noise of entering classmates and backpack opening. Of the conversation that I was able to understand, very little was of audible-enough levels. The mere telling of this story in a classroom surrounded by strangers baffled me. Especially saying the following two comments loud enough to be blogged about a lifetime later:
"You know, (chokes back a laugh), he really wasn't that big."
"But (extended pause) the next morning I felt like I had rode a horse."
Then class began.
