Polar bears and red pens

Once upon a time, and by that I mean Monday, I made a giant ass of myself. I will pause a moment while you all stand back and gasp in the shock of that confession.

I have a professor. Since he is the head of my particular department and my departmental advisor, I will call him Professor Bossofme. I am taking a writing course from Prof. Bossofme; it's my first college writing class as a matter of fact. Monday night was our second meeting; he treated us to the first public reading of his new textbook. He started, of course, at the introduction. We were discussing leads -those first few attention-grabbing lines of any text-- that night and he wanted to explain how it was done. Well, it was very poetic and compelling for a history book.

It also had a huge, roaring error, smackdab in the middle of line two. He said something the equivalent of "it's midnight in Antarctica, and we're waiting for the polar bears" (it was a different area and a different animal, but we've got to be Google-concious in this crazy world).

So, because I'm a jerk with no internal censor, I waited until after class and jokingly pointed out that there were no polar bears in Antarctica. Then I ran down three flights of stairs in embarrassment.

Last night I get an email from Prof. Bossofme. He mentioned he reads my workblog. "You have a real talent" he says, and then....


he offers me a job as an editor.