There have been many fine lectures it has been my privilege to attend at TESC, but three of them especially stick out in my mind. This trio of presentations reveal, I'm afraid, that I wasn't really all that intellectual as a student. It was the form rather than the content that sticks in this old cartoonist brain of mine.

The first lecture was probably the most utilitarian in terms of helping me later in life. Thad Curtz was giving a talk on child psychology. He played a tape of a baby crying for five straight minutes without interruption. For most of us 20-somethings who had yet to discover the sleeplessness of parenthood, this was excruciating and seemed to last forever. When I became a father a few years later, having the crying limited to five minutes would've been welcome.

I can't remember what the point of his lecture was supposed to be, but Byron Youtz gave the second memorable class. He had set up a giant mobile in one of the lecture halls, and set it spinning. But something went horribly wrong and it careened out of control, threatening to clobber anyone who could not duck. A real Pit and the Pendulum situation. There might have been some screaming. That always spices up any educational experience.

The third memorable lecture was around 1978-79 by the late, great Richard Jones for the Shakespeare program. And this one actually had an impact on TESC administrative policy. Some of us were loitering around the outside of the lecture hall doors, just visiting before going in, when we saw a particularly agitated classmate of ours push past us and storm in. A few seconds later we heard Richard yell that student's name followed by a line I normally associated with B-movies, "Nooooooooooooooo!" Then we saw several dazed looking students come out the door as if a bomb had just gone off. Apparently our stirred up fellow pupil had leaped over several rows of seats to pound the living daylights out of another attendee. A few years later, the existence of a "problem-student" monitoring task force had been revealed at TESC, and I believe Richard was a member. He cited the 1978-79 incident as the spark that created this group.