A Tale

How did he love her? He could count the ways, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.

He fell for her during a period of time. He was a bachelor professor; she, a student in his classes.

Unlike some of his colleagues, he was not one to date his students. But with her, well, with her, he had been smitten. From the first day she answered roll call, her beauty caught his eye. Yet, it was her charm, her intelligence, her smile, which slowly eroded his tenet of not pursuing a student, which captured his heart, which slowly turned a once well-developed mind into a mind of one thought: her.

He was a man of his students. Had always been a professor who felt a great warmth and compassion for his students. Perhaps, this connection came from his lack of a Ph.D.. He was a Mister, not a Doctor. He’d sit with them at lunch. He’d have a beer with them in the local pub.

In addition to his teaching duties, he was also charged with the supervision of the men’s dorm. He felt like a surrogate father to the boys in his dorm. They thought of him as a wise uncle: One with whom they could share a joke or tell whom they were dating, or just talk about anything.

He believed this relationship with “his boys” was a sacred trust, but then came her.

He had sat with her group a few times during lunch. He’d shared the occasional beer with her group at a local pub. He had hoped these encounters would reveal some flaw in her: A tendency to be snide, or a prude, or lascivious, or cursed with a mule’s laugh, or be flatulent, anything that might dissuade his feelings for her. Instead of anything that might turn him away, he discovered only new delights. She was everything he’d ever imagined finding in a girl, everything he’d ever hoped to find in a possible wife.

One night, he sat with her group and the conversation flowed, soon it flowed only between the two of them. As the night passed, everyone else left the pub. Only he and she sat at the table still talking until the place closed. And they parted ways for the evening.

He bubbled like a fine bottle of champagne throughout the walk home, until he realized that the encounter actually left him more miserable. The evening convinced the bachelor professor that he had fallen in love, but why would such a young girl want anything to do with an old, approaching middle-aged man like himself?

Yet, that one evening’s conversation led to other conversations between them. She spoke to him very much as a friend. He maintained a friend’s closeness but kept his love for her at a friendly distance whenever he visited with her.

Though anything but a shy man, he could not bring himself to ask her for a date. He had several reasons. One, he couldn’t bring himself to so immediately break his tenet of not seeing a student. Two, he was certain she would still speak to him if he asked her out.

A conversation with the boys at the dorm convinced him that he must act. Asking a few of his dorm residents their weekend plans, one boy said he had a date with a girl — the girl whom the professor quietly loved. It was not unusual for the professor to ask the young men questions, so he asked the details of the boy’s date plans with the girl.

Knowing the time and day, the professor visited a flower shop. He ordered a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to the girl, specifically 15 minutes before the time of her date with the boy. He wrote a quick note, signed his name, paused, then gave her name and address to the flower store clerk.

Later that night, he asked the boy about the date. The student said, it hadn’t gone well. She seemed to have something or someone else on her mind. Did she say what or who, the professor asked. The student answered no, she just seemed distracted.