Megan and Murray McMillan

I was giving a tool demo last week and burned my hand, the prize of stubbornness. Damn if I was going to let that stuck [hindsight: broken], metal chuck of that corded drill win with the whole class watching.

The worst was when I broke my ankle during a lecture. I remember animatedly making a point and then instantaneously dropping. My freshman class looking over me in that perfect silence that only an extreme juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy can create, like those noise-canceling headphones which negate sound by forming inverted sound, or like crafting white light by adding all the colors.