So You Wanna Be a Vet - Part 3 - "College Days and The Big Bang"

So You Wanna Be a Vet - Part 3 - "College Days and The Big Bang"

I was getting used to the rigorous schedule of the first year in Veterinary College. I was meeting some new people in my class and getting used to finding my way around the labryinth of hallways of the school. Events surrounding the closure of the Neuroanatomy lab (because of my knocking the Brain Display over) were starting to become the distant past.  Things seemed to be going quite well... until the day of the Big Bang.

We were sitting in Immunology class that day when I was getting hungry. It was coming on to lunch time and I rarely ate breakfast in those days (as a side note - there does seem to be a recurring theme around food in these stories....Hmmm). "Eldon" (name changed to avoid causing any embarrassment for him) was sitting to my left side eating a box of 48 Voortman cookies and drinking a quart of Beep Orange Juice through the cattle insemination rod he had brought along from home.  There was something a bit different about him but I found him very likeable and intelligent and we became fast friends. Perhaps it was the Weider weightlifting belt he was wearing that fascinated me (to this day I have no idea why he wore a weightlifting belt to class and he never did give me a good explanation). Little did I know at that time how his idiosyncrasies and personality quirks would keep me entertained for the next 4 years. 

As the Immunology lecturer was just putting the finishing touches on her talk I decided I would beat the line-up to the lunch room by having myself prepared. Before she got her last words out I was up and walking quickly towards the rear door of the lecture hall. The rear door had a large plate glass window in it and as I turned the knob my hand must have slipped off of it and to my horror the door didn't open.  My momentum created by my hunger and my quick pace carried me onward and the next thing I knew I was stuck in the broken window as piece after piece of sharp glass tumbled from its location to the floor below.  CRASH, BANG, CRASH, CRASH, CRAShhhhhhh.  Every time I took a breath another piece of glass would fall.  The back door led to an elevated deck with wooden stairs leading down another 6 feet or so to the main hallway.  The falling panes of glass (safety glass was not common back then) hit the deck and then shattered further as it tumbled another 6 feet to the firm hall flooring below. 

Barely wanting to move for fear that more glass was going to crash to the floor below, I turned my head and found the professor standing beside me asking me if I was alright. As I turned a dark red flushed with embarrassment (and thankfully not blood!), she graciously helped me out of my predicament by unsnagging my sweater from the sharp glass shards that were keeping me 1/2 in and 1/2 out of the gaping window space in the door. All 120 of my classmates sat and watched me struggling to free myself, completely entertained by the sight before them. The noise was deafening and seemed to go on forever.

Finally free from my entrapment, I thanked the professor and quickly left the scene but not before one of my classmates yelled out.. "hey Ken... you are going to be on our hockey team... right?"  I decided not to eat lunch in the lunchroom as I just had to get as far away as possible. 

Later that day I passed the lecture hall and noticed that the glass had been cleaned up and the window to the lecture hall had been boarded closed by the janitors.  I headed on into the library to continue some research for an essay I was preparing.  After a couple of hours of deep thinking in the Library I had almost forgotten the events of earlier. I got up to go to the washroom and as I was walking down the hall a couple of secretaries were walking closely in front of me. Suddenly, the one turned to the other and said... "Ohhh my God, did you hear that glass breaking earlier today??!!  I thought a truck was coming through the building!!"   Sheepishly I continued on my way hoping I wouldn't be recognized as the "truck" that caused the damage.