It's About Time

IT’S ABOUT TIME
By Doc Walton

It had been a long journey from his birth in Ulm to where he now sat behind a large desk in front of an almost floor to ceiling blackboard at a prestigious university. He had become, mysteriously and miraculously to him, famous along the way and although that fame was not entirely uncomfortable, it did intrude upon the time he spent working and thinking, two activities he considered one and the same. The university had not asked him to teach, but rather to study, to research, to create and hadn’t he himself said, “The monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind”? But, alas, he loved to communicate, loved the interaction with other bright minds and so in the end he had volunteered this time in the classroom.

He now looked about his new, sought after, and finally achieved surroundings, that promised the security he had so long desired and noted the half circle alignment of chairs around his desk. He had asked they be positioned that way to encourage a more intimate dialog with his students. The straight rows facing a lectern that was more common to academia had always seemed somewhat impractical and a touch militaristic to him. Could the students on the flanks really appreciate the nuances of physical gestures that accompany a good lecture? He thought not. And look how many chairs there were! His was not an easy subject. Were the students who would soon occupy those chairs be in attendance to learn and absorb his knowledge, or would they be there merely as testament to his recent fame. He would soon find out.

Yes it had been a long journey, and he was wont to wander down memory’s twisted path, but now was not the moment for nostalgic reflection. A bell had rung somewhere distant, and its echo resonated in the hall outside his classroom door. The students would be here in a matter of minutes. How, he wondered, would he begin this first day as a teacher of such a difficult discipline? How could he make the complex simple? Not to worry, he thought. After all, wasn’t he the one who had said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” He was sure he would think of something.

When the rush of noise and energy that is a classroom filling had subsided, the university’s newest and most prestigious acquisition rose from his desk, smiled at his charges and picked up his long wooden pointer. He was a rumple of a fellow with a shaggy mustache and a head burdened with wooly, unkempt gray hair. He had bright eyes that observers often described as “twinkling.” You could see the humor behind those eyes, and those who knew him were aware that he was not above a comedic quip. He once said, “The Devil has put a penalty on all the things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health, or we suffer in soul, or we get fat!”

The room full of students both eager and curious bent forward in their chairs, breathless in anticipation of the great man’s first words.

As he rose from his desk and shuffled to the blackboard, he remembered again the distance he had traveled from Ulm to this place he could now truthfully call home, Princeton. He placed his pointer on the equation that had made him famous, E=mc2, and gave the class his broadest smile.

“It’s about time” he said. “It’s about time.”