After years of wondering whatever happened to Dr. Threadwell after he suffered a drug-induced mental breakdown, I ran into my college calculus professor the other day.  I quickly observed that he got new shoes.  Unfortunately, he still has not seen anybody about the Testicular Projection Syndrome (TPS) he suffers. 

Grasping the elusive nuances of Calculus and Analytic Geometry requires a healthy dose of misdirection and abstract thinking. If peered at too closely, integral and differential equations, hyperbolic and transcendental functions, trigonometric substitutions and polar coordinates, will confound any attempt to be captured by mental accuity. Thus, distraction and a self-distancing approach to allow for a higher-level appreciation of the fundamental truths and axioms of the medium and their interrelationships are required. Dr. Threadwell understood this well and was a master in conveying knowledge in a highly distracting manner. Many are the times and raucous was the laughter when he stretched to the top of the whiteboard to scribe a parametric equation describing projectile motion, only to turn around to the class and discover he had popped a nut out of the side of that skanky outfit in the process. Projectile motion took on a new meaning.

I took two semesters of Calculus with Dr. Threadwell. The last time I saw him, he was walking through the Business Building, in a haze. Eyes wandering twenty feet above everybody else’s heads, bumping into students every step of the way, no doubt contemplating l’Hopital’s Rule. My best friend in college, who was with me at the time, and with whom I’d just returned from a liquid lunch at Hills and Dales in preparation for our final in Sociological Research Methods, asked me in a very collegiate fashion, “Who the @#!* is that freak??” I just laughed and replied, “That’s my calculus professor, dude.”

Shortly thereafter, right before I was to begin my third semester of Calculus, Dr. Threadwell dropped from sight of the university - no explanations.  I had a hunch that maybe he had gone, permanently, onto that higher plane, and was happier in a place where he could deal with numbers and not people.  For those of us who had made it through those first two semesters and were looking forward to that third and final semester, we were much disappointed to find he had been replaced with an Engineering professor who had no talent or knack for calculus and who was also a very boring dresser.  (More on that later)

We all blamed his disappearance on the Dean of Instruction.

We lost a damn good professor that day…

Dr.  “Spitterman” Benny Cornett, shown here in his favorite Student Disciplinary Appeals Hearing outfit, thank you from all of us for depriving us of a quality third semester of Calculus and Analytical Geometry.

P.S.  Shaving doesn’t help…