The Half-Naked Professor

Once upon a time…I had Astronomy Lab with Dr. Chambliss, age 70.

Now to aptly describe Chambliss, let me mention that the first time I saw him he was wearing a sweatshirt, black khakis, and velcro shoes. He also only had shaved half his face, leaving white stubble sprinkled across the other side. Essentially, I thought he may have a learning disability only to find out he was a Harvard alumnus.

To add to the confusion, he only spoke in unintelligible fragments, never finishing a full sentence. This explains why I received an F in Astronomy Lab (thankfully I had a normal teacher for Astronomy Lecture to average out my grade to a B).

 
 (Chambliss, second from left. The short, pale one.)

One day, after a fragmented lesson and some worksheets in the classroom, he told us to meet him in the planetarium for the second half of the class (as per usual). In fragmented bits, he said he would meet us there; he had some things to mail and would have to run to the post office.

We all trudged down to the planetarium, 5 minutes went by…10 minutes went by. We were all snoozing/lounging in our seats when he burst into the room. It went a little something like this:
“I uh….I’m just….soaked…I’m soaked through…soaked to the bone…it is just pouring out…my shirt is just uh, ah, uh, soaked.”

{class looks at each other and gives a unanimous shrug}

“I’m just ah, uh, yeah, I’m just soaked. Soaked back here. I’m just ah, I can’t uah, well, I’m just going to uah, have to take this shirt off. I can’t teach uh, you know, I uh, no I can’t teach like this.”

{class, as a whole, looks confusedly at each other}

{Rustling from Chambliss’ perch} “Ok..so uh….let’s get started…now…Ursa Minor ah…uh….is uuh…in the springtime is uh…you can see here….”

{class, now alarmed, looks toward Chambliss and confirms in giggles and gasps that yes in fact, he has removed his shirt and his milky cataract skin glows in the dark with two large inkspots at the top of his chest where his pepperoni nipples soak up the attention of 40 pairs of eyes}

Forty-five minutes later, Chambliss concluded class, turned on the flood lights and said, “Ok, now uh, those worksheets, if you uh, haven’t uh, those worksheets need to be, yeah. I’m collecting, yep, right over here, uh, ah….hand them in.”

We all hesitantly edged toward the now half-naked Chambliss, threw our worksheets in his direction and bolted.