University Days by James Thurber, 1933
The magic trick:
Presenting four episodes in one story
Thurber gives us an amusing set of anecdotes from his college days at Ohio State University during World War I. Or was it The Ohio State University back then?
It’s a funny story, a little dated of course, but still good to generate a smile or two. Essentially, it’s four episodes – each dealing with memories of a different college course. One is pretty hilarious, two are fine, and one is a dud. Not a bad hit rate, really, when you map it out. And that’s the advantage of multiple episodes under one story’s umbrella. Not every one has to be a hit.
And that’s quite a trick on Thurber’s part.
The selection:
I passed all the other courses that I took at my University, but I could never pass botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower cells, until he came to me.
I would be just standing there. “I can’t see anything,” I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury claiming that I could too see through a microscope but just pretended I couldn’t.
“It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway,” I used to tell him.
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