Day 33: Professor Bennion

John, you’ve got this pull in my memory far out of proportion to your mass. And it’s no pejorative statement on your stature, just a metaphor: I knew other English faculty far better than I knew you.

Maybe it’s how you talked about sex in class — frankly, acerbically, even angrily. Or how your kindness and curmudgeonliness were two sides of a coin. Or how if I spoke to you, even when we were engaged in conversation, you seemed surprised I was there, as if I’d just pulled you from your tinkering with that thing that wouldn’t resolve.

Or maybe it’s that when you told me I was a good man, that time after I’d expressed my faith, you said it sadly — like you saw something in me or in you or in the both of us that you couldn’t unsee or say. I think I see it too.

(This is Day 33 of a 100-day project. For more about When I Was Mormon, read the introductory post. To access older posts, visit the archive.)