these children now

The old man lectured for two hours, taking us from the end of Chaucer to King Richard II to the start of the English theatre and Shakespeare, and then it was 9pm. A few students got up and started leaving. "This lecture is not over until I say it is!" the professor hollered. The student with his knapsack on looked at the old man for a second and then slipped through the doors anyways as though he had stolen a chicken. The old professor heaved away at his last sentence. "Thank you for your attention," he said. That was his last sentence of the evening. There was a hush in the lecture hall. This was a English 202. A lot of these were high school kids, bubbly and giddy as they carried their laptops into class, and now out of class. The old man drank from his water bottle. In that moment I identified closely with him. My heart dropped a little inside of me from some reason.