ALBERTO GONZALEZ
Staff Scallywag
Professor Dreary has now been teaching geology at Fredonia for the last 20 years, or how he remembers it, the number of years since he could have had a child with his ex-wife, but declined the opportunity.
Back then, his wife had really wanted a child, and he was taken aback when she later decided to divorce him and find a better man. He didn’t really miss her, but rather the opportunity to force a child into acting so that he could live vicariously through the child.
Dreary had never wanted to be a geology teacher, and he still doesn’t. Even so, he makes a big spectacle on syllabus day when students always neglect to ask him about his life story. He responds to this by monologuing the story of his life anyway, starting with the moment his parents conceived him outside of a KFC/Taco Bell combo in a parked car.
Ever since the age of 6 when Dreary first saw the musical Grease, he knew he wanted to have an onstage presence like John Travolta’s onscreen crush, Olivia Newton-John. Dreary knows that he was born to be an actor, but after he got offered a position to teach at Drab, he realized he needed the money and immediately accepted. He just couldn’t get up the courage to leave and pursue his real dream of acting. However, Dreary sees his job as one of his great acting accomplishments. He could not dislike geology more, but still he puts on a performance telling students, “Of quartz I love geology. It rocks.”
He increasingly finds himself getting lost in geology, the shimmers of light bouncing off the many angles of the calcite he keeps on his desk. He manipulates his in-class example of perfect three dimensional cleavage so the sunlight pouring in from the gap between his always-drawn blinds creates spots of lights that dance across his room in all directions. He imagines they are cameras going off as he arrives at the premiere of another of his films.
He feels like all of his lying about how much he loves his job has really done some good for his students in the long run, though, and he hopes to one day be recognized for his great service to them. Though he always accidentally insults geology, they always think he’s joking. It helps foster their love for geology, even when he suggests they quit doing it because it’s not a practical career, unlike acting.
In fact, it seems that his students really do love him, as they call him “airhead,” which he thinks is in reference to the fact that he claims to love the element Oxygen.
How could he ever leave this position? He wonders as he waits for his Tinder date to meet him in a parked car outside Taco Bell. He hopes of convincing his date to conceive a child with him, as he feels that teaching, though it has obviously done his students a service, has not really done him one.