If you don’t like pieces that are analytical of human behavior, save yourself the effort right now.
You know those people who talk too much in class? I’m not talking about the ones who whisper to other people, or just flat out talk while the professor is giving his or her lecture. I’m talking about the ones that ask too many questions. Or rather, the ones that raise their hands and are given permission to speak. Usually it doesn’t seem to be a question at all. Rather, these people see their classes as a forum for which to share their knowledge with the world. But the worst are the ones that don’t even so much share their knowledge as much as they share their wit. Or their attempt at wit, which is sadly the case most of the time.
Case in point: Today in my Religion & Its Critics class we were talking about, I don’t know, something. It was review for our exam, and I was taking notes, but I sort of zone out when my prof gets off topic. Anyway, I know he started to babble about how the government adds fluoride to our drinking water. It had something to do with Marx’s principle of alienation. Or maybe it was Feuerbach’s principle of alienation. There was some alienation going on. So this guy in the class raises his hand in order to express his amazement to the fact that the government provides this service. He makes some crack about our tax dollars at work, and the lecture continues. Our prof asks for further questions, and there’s a pause. The same guy raises his hand and says, “So they really add fluoride?” This got some laughter from those looking for any kind of diversion. He then starts talking about Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory and how one of his theories is that fluoride is used for some kind of mind control. My friend Elijah, in a successful attempt at wit, points out that in that film Mel Gibson’s character is crazy. While I do not promote the practice of bursting the bubbles of others for one’s own gain, this was close to receiving my approval. So the class is about to end, and my prof asks one more time if there are any questions. This same guy raises his hand on more time and simply says, with a certain amount of astonishment in his voice, “Fluoride!”
Now you might think me rather cruel to be sounding off on this. I mean, what if I misinterpreted what I saw? What if he wasn’t making an attempt at humor, but rather his mind simply could not wrap itself around the concept of artificially added fluoride to a drinking water population. But think of it this way: I’m choosing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt that he is a competent young man who can understand such things. So in fact I’m promoting his general intelligence, not degrading it. What I’m calling into question here is his sense of timing. There is a time to be witty and to show off. Doing so in a class that you and other people are paying a substantial amount of money to take would not qualify as one of those times. Plus if you’re not funny then there’s never a time nor a place.
