Friday, January 13, 2012

The Gummy Bear

This one's for you, Hannah.
I'm currently taking a creative writing class from a famous author. Like, New York Times Bestseller famous. He doesn't write the kind of fiction that I read, but my good friend Hannah and my husband both really like him, and he only teaches one class once a year at the university, so I figured I would give it a shot. He's actually pretty awesome and I love the class.

I guess he has a thing for gummy bears because some guy who's trying to suck up to the teacher always brings a bag of them to class for famous author to chew on while he teaches. Tonight famous author was recovering from a cold, so the entire two hours he was talking looked like this:

Cough into his hands
do that little pinch the nose and flick at the nostrils thing you do when you feel like you have crusty boogers
roll gummy bears between his fingers
pop them in his mouth

It was disgusting, but hey, they were his germs he was eating, right?

So then halfway through class he gets this brilliant idea to start rewarding students who ask questions by tossing them a gummy bear. So then the scenario goes:

cough into his hands repeatedly while talking
wipe his nose with his fingers
roll gummy bears between his fingers for like two minutes each while listening to and answering question
toss them to the student who asked the question

More often than not the gummy bear landed on the floor or someone else caught it and handed it to the person who it was intended for. The question asking student would then excitedly gobble up the gummy bear. They were probably hoping some of Author's literary genius would be transmitted to them.

I was horrified. It was like the movie Contagion coming to life.

But then I had a brilliant idea.

So I raised my hand, asked a question, and jumped like an eager seal when he tossed a gummy bear my way. The kid behind me caught it and politely passed it up.

I wrapped it up and put it in my backpack to give it to my good friend Hannah who loves famous author. I will put it in the mail and she can be closer to him than she ever imagined.

Because that's the kind of friend I am.

Because I love you, Hannah.

You're welcome.

3 comments:

Smith Clan said...

I've been trying to put Kelton to bed for the last two hours. For some reason, he doesn't want to nap today and I would rather fight him for two hours then let him stay up. Anyway...I'm barely breathing or moving and I read this blog post and I start shaking with silent laughter. Tears are filling up my eyes and I'm rocking and rocking in my chair because I'm dying and I almost fall out of the chair. All the while, Kelton is screaming in the background. (He has since fallen asleep...don't worrry). I laughed so silently and so hard that I literally bruised my brain.

I've secretly wanted the inside scoop on every single one of these classes. And so far, you are doing a GREAT job of keeping me informed. I wanted the good, the bad, and the dirty. Who'd've thought that I'd like the dirty the best of all? I'm going to take that SNOT BEAR and I'm going to put it in a nice shadow box and make it pretty and then I'm going to display it in my house. Somewhere noticeable. And it is going to say something like "Snot Bear by Brandon S." because I don't want anyone to STEAL it and everyone will just think that it belongs to my hubsters Brandon Smith.

Thanks for this post. It made my whole day so much more enjoyable. And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep me updated on the dirty details from Brandon S. Otherwise, I will get permanent brain damage. And I might just have to post this on Facebook without your permission because I love it so much. And you:) I'm just getting more and more in your debt. I better dust my slave manacles.

Lindsay RC Wilson said...

Sounds like said student needs to bring some of the Costco gummy bear vitamins next time.

Emma said...

Hannah - I'm glad you liked it. :-) BTW, your bear is white in case you were wondering.

LRCW - That's a fantastic idea! As a side note, we have those and Calvin always says, "I want a gummy bear, but not those kind that make me strong." I guess he can tell the difference. :-)