38 Humanity 101 by Denise Duhamel

I was on my way to becoming a philanthropist,

or the president, or at least someone who gave a shit,

but I was a nontraditional student

with a lot of catching up to do. I enrolled in Humanity 101

(not to be confused with the Humanities,

a whole separate department). When I flunked

the final exam, my professor suggested

I take Remedial Humanity where I’d learn the basics

that I’d missed so far. I may have been a nontraditional student,

but I was a traditional person, she said, the way a professor

can say intimate things sometimes, as though

your face and soul are aglow in one of those

magnified (10x) makeup mirrors.

 

So I took Remedial Humanity, which sounds like an easy A,

but, believe me, it was actually quite challenging.

There were analogy questions, such as:

Paris Hilton is to a rich U.S. suburban kid

as a U.S. middle-class kid is to:

1.) a U.S. poverty-stricken kid,

2.) a U.S. kid with nothing in the fridge, or

3.) a Third World kid with no fridge at all.

We were required to write essays about the cause of war—

Was it a phenomenon? Was it our lower animal selves?

Was it economics? Was it psychological/sexual/religious

(good vs. evil and all that stuff)? For homework

we had to bend down to talk to a homeless person

slouched against a building. We didn’t necessarily have to

give them money or food, but we had to say something like

How are you? or What is your favorite color?

 

We took field trips to nursing homes, prisons,

day-care centers. We stood near bedsides

or sat on the floor to color with strange little people

who cried and were afraid of us at first.

I almost dropped out. I went to see the professor

during his office hours because I wanted to change my major.

He asked, “Is that because your heart is being smashed?”

He thought I should stick it out, that I could make it,

if I just escaped for an hour a day blasting music

into my earbuds or slumping in front of the TV.

I said, “But that’s just it. Now I see humanity everywhere,

even on sitcoms, even in pop songs,

even in beer commercials.” He closed his door

and showed me the scars under his shirt

where he had been stabbed. He said I had to assume

everyone had such a wound, whether I could see it or not.

He assured me that it really did get easier in time,

and that it was hard to make music when you were still

learning how to play the scales. He made me see

my potential. He convinced me of my own humanity,

that one day I might even be able to get a PhD. But first

I had to, for extra credit, write a treatise on detachment.