Carl Steinberg had become one of those men for whom it was possible to have a mid-life crisis without ever being fully aware of it. His forty-three years on earth had been very comfortable. His parents were so satisfied by his birth that they decided to have no more children. He lived with them for his first 14 years quite happily, and became a thoroughly spoiled child. It had long been understood that Carl would become a college professor just like his mother and father (who taught economics and law, respectively), and so during his 15th year he was sent away to a private prepatory school, thus beginning his long yet not very arduous journey of ivy-league education. Carl found himself studying as an undergraduate at Yale University during the height of anti-war sentiment in the 1960s. Wanting to belong, but not wanting to rock the boat, he decided to stage a protest of his own; he became an English major and declared his desire to teach English at the college level, instead of choosing architecture, the more practical course of study that his parents had chosen for him. Much to his dismay no one seemed to care what he studied -- he wasn't even sure that his parents had noticed the change in curriculum on the report cards he sent home. And for the first time in his life, Carl had the fleeting suspicion that he was not "the captain of the ship", as they say. That perhaps there was no captain at all.
The next twenty or so years of his life passed like clockwork; he graduated from Yale with honors, and went on to study at Cambridge and received his doctorate in the literature of the English Renaissance, and after a brief tour of Europe he accepted an assistant professorship in the English department of a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. Like most whose lives are planned far in advance, he grew fat and sluggish and rather boring, but was quite contented with his station in life. The gears were well oiled, the clockwork never broke down, and life went efficiently by.
To be continued.
Hang on tightly, let go lightly.
About Me
- porfiry
- The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.