Part 2

Meet Duke. A professor of literature. Originally from Maine; now teaching in South Carolina. Nasty divorces can do that.

Day in and day out, Duke played with words. Taught the words of others. Old words. New words. If he let it, teaching could fill every minute of every day. He had very little time for his own words.

Duke had a blog of his own, ‘theburntoutprofessor’. He had only posted 5 things.

5 things in 2 years. Wow! What a waste? No one was waiting on the edge of their seats for anything he had written. “Just write”, he told himself on many occasions. With pen in hand, all those words he played with were gone. All the things he needed to say evaporated into nothingness.

One night, he lay awake on his bed trying to come up with a fun idea for his senior students. He might have one student that didn’t have a social media account. ‘His blog’, he thought. He would have his students find a person on a blog site to write their class project about. Happy with his idea, he fell fast asleep.

A groan fell over his class as he shared is brilliant idea. They had all semester to find a writer and analyze their blog.

He gave them a time line as a guide. First on the list, find a blog. Then discover your person. That wasn’t too much to ask between Homer and Bryant. Right?

Sam was one of his most active students. She was smart, quiet, worked hard, and worked. Two weeks after the assignment, she handed in her blog choice and the blog she found; Chico’s Mom. She had even picked out a name for her assignment, Analyzing Chico. With a big smilie face and the word, ‘cute’, Duke gave her work back.

As he lay awake he wondered, ‘was cute really the right word’?

Every Friday, Sam submitted her work. She printed off the piece and her take on it. She was doing way more work than he felt was required. But that was Sam. As a professor, he liked students like Sam.

Her analysis’ intrigued him. He took it upon himself to look at this blog. There was a couple times he disagreed with her spin. But wasn’t that the best part about poetry? What does it say to you? What message do you get from someone else’s emotional battleground?

The Covid Lollipop. Shew! Sam had a whole different thought pattern. She prescribed to the idea that covid was a hoax and the pandemic was an economic weapon used to terrorize the world. The Covid Lollipop proved her point. At home testing was a waste of money.

He didn’t feel that way. Even now, he wouldn’t eat in a restaurant. Still taught classes with a mask on. The Covid Lollipop was entertaining. Cute. There was that word again; cute.

He almost sent her a message. Almost. Since Sam was reviewing Chico’s Mom’s work, he decided not to follow her.

Honor Thy Parents; Duke had never been religious and people that believed in religion blew his mind. It was so foreign to him to believe in a higher power.

He felt like he had an amazing childhood and it broke his heart to think other children didn’t. He wanted to send her a message and ask her about her ‘craptastic’ childhood. But.

As the weeks passed, he found himself waiting for her next post. Some were funny. Others sad. She alluded that she was working on other stuff. Would she post them?

He hadn’t looked forward to anything like he looked forward to the next post.

New Earth. He didn’t think Sam would choose this one. It wasn’t a poem. Her blog was titled ‘Poetry & More’. New Earth was a short story. It made him so mad that the main character essentially committed suicide because she didn’t want to live in a world void of God. What kind of stupid logic was that? He had written out a whole big message to her wanting to understand the reasoning. But.

Look at Chico. He’s so cute. There was that word again, cute. If she loved an animal as much as she appeared to love Chico, could she love a person the same way? None of her writing gave the indication that she was in a relationship.

All of Duke’s students did a good job on this assignment. Four said they hated it. Overall the feedback was positive. So much so, he was toying with the idea of making it a permanent part of his course outline.

Sam, of course, made an A.

Coffee was such an important part of Duke’s life. He got up every morning, turned the pot on and took a shower. When he stepped out of the shower, the aroma of brewed coffee hit him full in the face. It was amazing.

On this morning, he wasn’t greeted by that divine smell. Where was his coffee? To his horror, the pot had died. Great.

After he dressed, he wondered down the beach to a little snack shack. The one where Sam worked.

Finally, coffee. She poured his coffee as he sat on the patio listening to the waves. Now this was something to write about; as he closed his eyes absorbing the sound and smell of the ocean. As usual, his words got lost.

A new person had arrived. Close enough he could hear a voice over the waves. Far enough away, he couldn’t understand what was being said.

He was almost asleep. The waves were magic. “Professor”. Someone was calling his name. “Professor”. It was Sam.

“Yes.” He forced himself to focus on her smiling face. She looked elated.

“I’ve met someone you should me.” He followed her to the only other person on the patio. On the table, the ocean breeze was causing a receipt to flap frantically under a heavy pen. Steam danced off a hot cup of coffee in the cooler morning air. Under a straw beach hat sat a woman. The wind forced sprigs of red hair to cling to her hat and face. Her face had been kissed by the South Carolina sun.

Sam beamed as she spoke, “professor meet Chico’s Mom.”