kayak on campus

so i was waiting outside my 3 pm class this afternoon - flipping through the pages that i hadn't read, hoping (as one generally does) that somehow i would be able to glean the contents of those leaves with a simple glance and that i wouldn't make a fool of myself in class discussion.

now i have to take a step back. there's a class that meets in the same room, right before my class which always runs right up to 3 o'clock, and i have never known what class it is. sometimes you walk into a classroom and you see notes scribbled all over the board and you can sort of figure out what you're dealing with, but this professor apparently never writes anything down, making my curiosity unmistakably peaked.

so, back to the hallway...

suddenly, the door opened and out poked the tip of a paddle, followed shortly thereafter by a student - a guy my age or a little older. he set the paddle against the wall, re-entered the classroom and closed the door behind him. absolutely perplexed and obviously intrigued, i cautiously returned to the flipping pages, keeping one eye overtly on the classroom door.

a few minutes later it opened again. this time the first thing that greeted my view was a blue plastic conical object which, a split second later, i realized was the nose to a bright blue kayak. the same guy carried out this kayak, placed it in the middle of the hall, and began to matter-of-factly stow the paddle in its special compartment. after getting over my sheer surprise, i saw that this guy was actually wearing swimming trunks instead of shorts, and these crazy water shoes instead of sandals - they looked like a cross between barney the dinosaur's feet and the toe socks i used to get for christmas and treasured beyond anything else.

so completely tickled, i had to ask the guy what on earth was going on. public speaking, he replied. he had just given a speech for his class on kayaking, and the kayak was his visual aid. with that, he hoisted the kayak to his shoulder and set off down the hall.

it was all so matter-of-fact. of course there's a kayak wandering around my campus, isn't there one on yours?