Once again, I forgot to renew some library loans, so began the trek to the new Dalton Mcaughey Library at the new Centre for Theology and Ministry to return some books I’m yet to read. There I happened to see a couple of old lecturers and one of the administrative staff I used to really like walking down the corridor. As I approached them I raised a hand to say hi and watched them pass me by, as if I were an odourless fart wafting through the hall.

I left the building feeling very upset. Surely they would remember me; I completed two courses there and spent seven years with them. It’s not like they receive 4000 enrolments a year. I walked back to the tram stop racking my brain to uncover some event where I may have done them enough wrong to deserve a deliberate snubbing. I remember as students we used to make jokes about them a bit (just the usual stuff about being stuffy old guys in academia) but I never recall saying anything terribly disrespectful about them (because I had a lot of respect for them), and I am confident that the friends I had there weren’t girly swats who run to the teacher with pieces of gossip.

By the time I boarded the tram I was less upset, and more rested in the knowledge that I have found evidence of what academic life can do to you; weather down your social skills. They’re everywhere, those guys who walk through the halls and alleys of universities lost in thought about Pannenberg or Judas or tomato soup, ever reminded that their school has cloistered them from the real world, where smiles and nods and hellos are important and not everyone has a tardis for a brain.

Please don’t let me turn into one of them.