It was the Fall of 1993 and I was in the first semester of my junior year at Notre Dame. Having to fulfill a philosophy requirement and being a political science major, I chose to kill 2 birds with one stone and take a political philosophy class. My expectations were to postulate on Hobbes, Locke, and all of the other mental titans that shaped our modern public service model. For most, this would be an enlightening experience. But deep thinking was not and never was my thing . . . but I had to do it in order to graduate. So I set my expectations the same as Judge Elihu Smails went he sent boys a lot younger than me to the gas chamber . . . didn’t want to do it . . . felt I owed it to them (them, in this case, being myself).
The professor I had was your standard younger college academic: passionate, educated, in tune with the current culture while still subtly reminding us of his intellectual superiority. And for the most part, he kept a fairly even keel demeanor when imparting his wisdom on us. He typically would come into class with a friendly greeting and get right into the guts of why rulers rule and what motivates them.
But today seemed different. He came into class a little disheveled; not physically like he had kicked the keg at the local watering hole 5 hours prior (typically that was left to the undergrads) but more in the way he was carrying himself. He had a smirk, was looking down at the ground, and then perused the class with his eyes. He had something to tells us, and from his expression it didn’t appear to be bad news. We sat there for about 30 seconds waiting for him to make us smarter and . . . nothing. We started looking around at each other to venture a guess as to why we were drifting off course. Then he started to talk . . . . “Alright, I have something to share.”
Except that we weren’t talking about the deep stuff that is usually our soup d’jour. We started talking about an event that gained much notoriety in June of that year. The wedded bliss of one John Bobbitt and his bride Lorena had hit a rough patch. If you don’t remember the root cause of this story, you can look it up online. Needless to say Lorena took great exception to her hubby’s actions and decided to pursue a lifelong dream of amateur surgery. So while Johnny Boy was deep in dream land, his wifey grabbed one of her best Ginsu knives from the kitchen and proceeded to remove the main offender of this dispute. (She was successful so I assume that she had stayed at a Holiday Inn the night before). A quick drive out into the country, a toss of said evidence out the window, and Lorena had closure.
The problem was that when multiple crimes like this are committed, the police tend to get involved. Crime scene analysis and evidence retrieval go hand in hand and this was no exception. The reason why I am telling you this is because the lead detective in this case happened to be the brother of my professor. And with news like this to share, you could hardly blame my professor for breaking character. The question is, how do you relay a message like this (you have to in this case) to a bunch of college students who are still working on their maturity, hygiene, and alcohol tolerance? Here’s how:
“So many of you have heard about the recent John Wayne Bobbit case. (snicker). Well, I will come right out and say it . . .my brother is a detective on the case in Virginia and he found it . . . er, the missing evidence. He drove off to the side of the road, walked down an embankment, and presto . . . there it was.”
After a slight pause from the not so sure peanut gallery, a slow laughter started to take over the room . . . started of course by my professor. For us, it was entertaining as it fed into most of our sophomoric senses of humor. For him, it was cathartic, maybe even therapeutic. After all, what would the greatest philosophical thinkers say about this gory, yet slightly comedic incident?
I think they would laugh too.
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