Heritage Thesis

I walk into my professor’s large office. My professor is my therapist, but not in body for she is older and with small frame. We sit at a large cherry desk, discussing a paper of mine. The paper is all marked up. There are lines through many a sentence; its pock-marked with comments. The paper is due more work.

I talk about the paper: I’m nervous; I feel there much to redeem in it. I go over some of the points. Something about how even Goethe did some soldiering in youth.

Abruptly, she says, “I want to talk about your thesis: heritage.”

I’m stunned, first at being cut off from my earnest discussion, then from the word heritage, for I don’t take it’s import.  The thesis she mentions refers not to the current paper, but to a paper for the class finale.

She expounds on heritage: “Patterns passed down generation after generation, until the pattern is broken.”

I look around; there are two young students — lovers — waiting for their turn with the professor.

PS: A day or two later, in happenstance, decided to listen to The Way of All Flesh, whose main thesis was on the inheritance of disposition.