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I Have Never in my Life Been Happier Eating Instant Ramen Noodles
I hated that man, absolutely hated him.
Dean was a massive annoyance to me every single Wednesday evening. I had signed up for an art appreciation lecture class as part of my ongoing dalliance through Sacramento’s system of community college art courses. In his late 40s or early 50s, he was that guy in literally every college class that sits right up front and center, treating every session like a one-on-one discussion with the professor. Even worse, the professor absolutely ate it up and indulged Dean with all the attention he craved. It infuriated me.
He claimed to have shuttered a business that netted him $250,000 annually and sold his home in order to, in his words, “spend time with my friends and take art classes.” I’m pretty sure he was either sleeping in his car or couchsurfing. The soles were halfway peeling off his shoes and he often wore “borrowed pants” (his words). Before class, he would chat excitedly about having found an orange tree in a park, harvesting the fruit and trading it for other food items so that his meals for the next week were covered. The entire endeavor had taken him the entire weekend and netted him about $25 in food.
Predictably, no one was impressed. Everyone else in class had dreams of moving up in life. Who in the world would purposely put themselves into poverty?
As for me, my life had become increasingly unmanageable due to an abusive and demanding boss, financial challenges and the general crushing anxiety of hauling myself up the corporate ladder for added responsibility, laughable wages and no benefits. I was supervising 25 people in three departments for $15 per hour. I had to recycle bags of aluminum cans and sell an old guitar in order to afford the course textbook. At the time, my future was unclear except for the aching need of some form of academic validation- a part of me that has never changed. Earning a perfect score on the Pop Art midterm elevated my mood in a way few things ever have. It was a form of validation that I could not find anywhere else in my life.
Classes would convene each week in very much the same way. Dean would have spent his week camping out in parks and libraries, reading everything he could on the current topic of study and hauling in stacks…
