If there's anyone who has personally demonstrated to me that
truth is stranger than fiction, it's my history professor. I will never forget
how on the first day of class he meandered in, hands in his pockets, sat down
on a desk, and introduced himself as D.J. "I'm not really a
professor," he explained, smiling like a child, though his wrinkled face
and mop of grey hair proclaimed him to be at least seventy years old, "I
just kind of wander in here and talk about history for a while. I don't sit in
an office or wear a jacket."
He certainly did not. He was sporting a vibrant yellow
fleece sweater with "GAP" stitched across the front. That first
encounter made quite an impression on me. I was sure I would love D.J.'s
teaching, and I did.
D.J.'s teaching method consists of pacing in front of the
class with his hands in his pockets as he rambles. Every once in a while he has
to stop in front of his old fashioned overhead projector and move the page
father down so that we can read the next heading. He frequently has to turn the
little black knob on the side to adjust the blurry image. That's about the most
that D.J. can do with technology. Sometimes he jokes that one day he'll learn
how to use PowerPoint, but we all know that he won't. He doesn't even know how
to change the bulb on his overhead projector when the old one burns out.
While he lectures, D.J. has a tendency to go off on rabbit
trails as he talks about all of the grand adventures he's experienced in his
life. He grew up in Britain, but has visited France, Mexico, the Bahamas and
most of the rest of the world. I have come to the conclusion that he's odder
than the people that he teaches about. Hermann Goering may have painted his
fingernails and Winston Churchill may have slept in silk pajamas, but D.J.
played with his pet goat, smuggled vegetation out of foreign countries in his
shoe, and drove a car without a floor.
D.J. is a large part of the reason that I have decided to
study history in addition in English because he has taught me that fact is
stranger than fiction.
So that is part of what I will be blogging about: odd
historical happenings and little-known facts. However, the title of my blog
also leaves the topic open to my other area of study: fiction, primarily in
literature, but also in film and drama. I am especially interested in how
history and fiction relate to one another. Studying the context of any work of
art always sheds a new light on the subject. I also have a dream of travelling
the globe, so if that ever happens I will be blogging about it. Basically, this
blog is going to have a lot a variety.
I suppose since this is my first ever blog post, I should
probably be introducing myself. I am a student just wrapping up my first year
at King’s University College, an affiliate of Western University. I am aiming
at a double major in English and history and have all kinds of crazy ideas
about what I want to do when I finish my degree, (teaching is not among them,
lest you ask, like everyone else). I love to write fiction and hope to be a
published author in the future. As to my quirky character and strange
obsessions, I have no doubt that you will find that out for yourself as I start
to blog regularly.
For you grammar nuts out there: I am Canadian and will use
Canadian spellings such as “favourite,” “colour,” “honour,” and “grey.” I also
strongly believe in the use of the Oxford comma, as you can see from that last
sentence. Americans: You have been warned.
