textfiles/sex/EROTICA/C/chrengin.txt

Archive-name: School/chrengin.txt
Archive-author: The Black Adder
Archive-title: Christ was an Engineer


	CS 502 was ``The Class to End All Classes'' just as WW I was ``The
War to End All Wars.''  Both were a brutal, unrelenting slaughter only
surpassed in sadistic cruelty by the food served by the university's dining 
commons.  Men and women alike were left empty shells, their bodies sapped of 
life and strewn about in a haphazard stream of F's, D's and perpetual 
incompletes.  And I chose to do battle with that demon.  No, I was not
a grad student learned, overconfident with a degree under my belt.  No,
I was not a senior who was forced to take the class in order to get that
trivial piece of paper known as a diploma.  I was a junior, brash, outrageous
and daring.

	The list of merciless tyrants -- Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan,
Attila the Hun and my old piano teacher -- seems incomplete without the 
name of CS 502's creator, Professor Robert Graham.  He wrote the text, he 
designed the curriculum, and, most importantly, he sadistically masterminded 
the programming assignments.  During the Middle Ages, if a man was accused of 
a crime, he could chose to be tested by fire.  He was given a bar of red hot 
metal, forced to hold it and walk the length of the room.  If God chose to 
protect his flesh from the searing hot metal, he was innocent of the crime.  
The Puritans of Colonial Massachusetts had a similar test for witches.  
They'd throw an accused witch into a pond and if she floated, she was a witch 
and burned at the stake.  If she sank and drowned to death, she was proved 
not to be a witch.  Such were Bob Graham's programming assignments.

	God, or Allah as the case may be, chose to protect me by granting
me a programming partner named Eman Hashem.  She was Palestinian and 
what Palestinians typically are to terrorism, Eman was to computer
engineering.  Her grade point: 4.0 out of 4.0.  We're not talking a 4.0
with an art class, ``clay for an A'', or geology for the criminally 
stupid, ``rocks for jocks.''  We're talking a flawless 4.0 with 3 
semesters of calculus, chemistry, physics and a whole slew of courses
schools form press gangs in order to fill.  There is but one God and his
name is Allah.  I was truly blessed and two weeks into the course, Eman
chose to drop.

	I was not disheartened.  My faith in God strong, he chose to bless
me again, this time in a Protestant form.  Don Joy opted to take over as
my programming partner on the first assignment.  He was a graduate student,
the man who taught me my first programming class and, before returning to
school, a Methodist minister.  It was not that strange of a combination if
you considered that after having three children, Don realized that
he could be a minister with no money or leave God's service and be able to
send his children to college.  Hence, Don came to grad school, for blessed
are those who walk in the way of the computer engineer.

	But I was not David, chosen to slay the Philistine giant, CS 502.
I was not Noah whose raw faith would allow me to weather the storm and
save a subset of all living creatures.  No, I was Job, the one God chose to 
test.  Three weeks into the semester, Don decided not to take the class.

	Poland, little Poland.  Home of my ancestors.  Conquered and divided
in the fifteenth century by the combined might of Prussia, Russia and 
Lithuania.  Poland, born again after ``The War to End All Wars.''  Poland,
who stood alone as Germany invaded from the west and the Soviet Union
from the east.  Gallant cavaliers whose lances charged against Hitler's
tanks.  I was Poland: heroic, noble and, at times, just plain stupid.  What
the hell's a horse, rider and lance supposed to do against a tank?
Every other student in CS 502 had a programming partner for the first 
assignment.  I stood alone against Bob Graham, Nazi, Marquis de Sade and 
dining commons chef.

	God did grant his prodigal small comforts.  I maintained a computer
room's printers and hence had a key.  At 17:00 hours each day by my military
time watch, the room closed to the public and I began my pilgrimage of 
redemption.  I'd sit at a highly coveted graphics terminal and begin composing 
my coding symphony.  At 19:00 hours each day, there was a knock at the door.  
It was my girlfriend,  Jennifer.  The scenario repeated itself daily until the 
assignment was due.  ``I brought you dinner,''  she said, as she pulled out 
fruit and sandwiches wrapped in napkins, all commandeered from the dining 
commons.

	``Grrr,'' was my response, because I was no longer fully human.  
Instead, I was a CS 502 barbarian warrior and I ate with a
corresponding level of etiquette.  Sandwiches disappeared in a single
bite.  With each hunk of food devastated, I'd respond with grunts of
satisfaction.  ``Grrr, grrr.''  My hunger satiated, my grunts became,
``GRRR!  GRRR!'' as Jennifer stood before me and undressed.

	``I brought you food,'' she said with a bare-all-smile.  ``Now,
service me.'' And I would, either standing up or on the study table
in the middle of the room.  My fly zipped and Jennifer beaming,  the time
was only 19:30.  We'd sit together and talk.  We'd laugh and joke like 
normal boyfriends do with their girlfriends.  We held hands, we kissed and
we talked about the weather, her classes, politics and the lingerie Jennifer
should buy for my upcoming birthday.  Fifteen to thirty minutes later
it would begin.  If it were a full moon and the computer room had been
located in downtown Transylvania, I'd have sprouted long nails, fangs and
grown hair all over my body.  I'd have been a computer engineering werewolf.
No, this was America.    First a twitch in the left side of my face.
Then I'd blink uncontrollably, my eyes not used to normal light, not used
to staring at anything but the computer screen.  I'd be mid-sentence --
``Yeah, I miss you too...'' -- and I'd lose my ability to speak coherently.
``Grrr, grrr, CS 502.''  Jennifer would smile, kiss my forehead, get
dressed and leave.  My last non-missing-link thought was always, ``She
gud woman.''

	And I fulfilled the first of Hercules' impossible seven labors --
the first programming assignment.  But I'd passed my tokens as an array,
rather than retrieving them individually.  It cost me ten points.  I received
a ninety, one of the highest grades in the class, but still I found myself
on the balcony of my dorm growling and howling at the moon for a good two
hours.  Once my soul was sufficiently cleansed, Jennifer would come out
and say, ``It won't change your grade dear.  Come.  It's time for bed.''
She'd take me by the hand and lead me to her warmth.

	And the sun and moon exchanged positions in the sky several times
before the first exam.  It was open notes and open book.  I was ready, 
I was psyched and I was wired from the combined sugar and caffeine of two 
liters of Coke.  The only way I could have been more pscyhed would be if I'd 
taken the Coke intravenously rather than ingesting it orally and don't think
I didn't ponder an I.V. drip.  It was Jennifer who talked me out of it.  ``Bad
boy!  Don't contemplate foolish things!  Service me.''  Gud woman.

	The blue books were handed out.  My two mechanical pencils were 
filled to the brim with HP hardness lead and my eraser, what else, a Staedler.
With my notes, homework solutions and text surrounding me, I was ready.  The 
combined sugar and caffeine did the trick.  I wrote furiously.  I'd skim a 
question, consult my notes or the text and immediately synthesize an answer.  
I stood before the walls of Jericho, blew my horn and down came walls of the 
first exam.  I was done.  The weekend was here and I had neither a CS 502 
exam nor programming assignment to worry about.  Back at the dorm, Jennifer sat
me on the bed and said, ``I have a surprise for you.''  Trusting her, I
naively let her take my wrist and promptly let her handcuff me to the
bed.  And their I remained from Friday night until Monday morning.  Bad,
bad computer engineer, ignoring your girlfriend.  Jennifer was on the
riding team.  She had these tight riding pants, knee high boots, spurs and
a three foot whip.  Combine that with her infatuation for Victoria's Secret
and Fredrick's of Hollywood and you you can guess the rest.

	I found it uncomfortable to sit on Monday during class when the
graded exam was handed back.  This had nothing to do with the fifty-six
I received on the exam and was solely a by product of my relationship with
``faster horsey, faster'' Jennifer.  I sat there in a latent sugar coma
and pondered.  The mean was  fifty-eight.  I'd nailed a solid C.  The
high was a seventy-three.  And so I read my answers and saw a glaring
minus twenty.  I'd skipped question two, a simple tree construction of
an expression evaluation.  A six year old with a masters in computer 
science could have answered it.  Actually, a non-caffeine hyped junior in
computer engineering could have answered it since the exam was 
open-notes/open-book.  I could easily have received full credit for the
question.  This would have given me a seventy-six, the highest grade in the
class by three full points.  Bad, bad computer engineer.

	At his office hours, Bob Graham said, ``Please, have a seat.''

	He must have assumed I remained standing out of respect.  ``It's about
the exam,'' I explained.  ``I skipped a question by accident.''

	I handed him my blue book.  Professor Graham thumbed through it
nodding silently.  ``It's too bad,'' he replied.  ``You would have done
quite well.''

	It is times like that when I'm thankful of my parochial school 
upbringing.  For twelve years, I'd had the ways of Christ taught to me on a
daily basis.  I was reasonably sure that it wouldn't be an overly Christian act
if I grabbed Professor Graham by the front of his shirt and screamed, ``No 
fucking shit moron, I'd have had the highest grad in class.''  Instead, I 
penitently stood as he proclaimed sentence, ``I'm sorry there is nothing I can 
do.''

	And so came Wednesday and I found sitting in class a little more
comfortable.  At the end of class, Professor Graham handed out the second
and final programming assignment and announced, ``If there is anyone who
needs a parter for this assignment, please come up to the front of class
and we'll set you up.''  The first assignment was fifteen-percent of our
grade and second was thirty-five.  I made my way to the front of class while
the bulk of class filed out in silent mourning as they read the next 
assignment.  Three of us had risen from the throngs in search of partners.

	Professor Graham said, ``There you have it, a programming team.''
Sort of akin to ``Let there be light.'' and Bob Graham saw the light and said,
``Hey, pretty neat.''

	We were after all the dregs of the penal colony CS 502, the
outcasts of the outcasts.  We solemnly shook hands and introduced ourselves.
My first partner was tall and slim, at least 6'6''.  Although in his
early twenties, he walked with the help of a cane.  Jeff Walker was his 
name and blonde spiky hair was not his most distinguished features, his eyes 
were.  As he asked me about my programming background, one of his eyes
looked at me while the other pointed in some arbitrary direction.  In
his hand, he held a computer print-out and printed on the header page
was J.\ Walker, his first initial and username.  Appropriate.  One eye was 
jay-walking while the other chose to use the crosswalk.  He was the genetically
perfect specimen of a computer geek.

	My second partner introduced himself as Mo Naveeb.  His was short,
thick of body and had black hair swept back without a part.  The front stuck up
despite his efforts to comb it down.  It turned the Mo was short for Mohammed,
again a Palestinian from Jordan.  His place of origin was boon as far as
I was concerned.  Firstly, I wasn't one of the three synonyms disliked by
Palestinians: Israeli, Jewish or New Yorker.  Secondly, he was from the
same country as Eman of the 4.0.  If he'd inherited even a fraction of her
talent, I was in for an easy time in CS 502, but `easy time' and `CS 502'
are oxymorons and a moron without the `oxy' is what Mo, turned out to be.

	The three of us made our way to an empty conference room.  With a 
piece of chalk in hand, Jeff divided the project into three parts, 
lexical/parsing unit, first pass assembler and second pass assembler.
As he wrote he leaned on his cane and Mo and I were both awed by his 
knowledge and ability to organize.  I was given the lexical/parsing unit,
Jeff would take the first pass of the assembler and Mo the second.  It
was done.

	I was excited when I returned to the dorm and waylaid Jennifer
into my room. ``You wouldn't believe my luck!  I have not one but two
programming partners.  One is from the same country as Eman, so he's got
to be a genius, and the other one was born sitting at a computer terminal.''
Jennifer just smiled.  She'd had her fill of CS 502 and was only content
to be `waylaid', so long as I dropped the first syllable of the word.  My
euphoria was temporarily stifled by the threat another week of not being
able to sit during class.

	Soon the sins of the flesh took a back burner to the piety of the
second programming assignment.   Robinson Crusoe set a precedence by being
marooned on a desert island.  My computer room and graphics terminal were
my island but I was only sentenced to six weeks of banishment.  After three
I met again   with my dual sidekicks Friday, namely Mo and Jeff.  I'd 
fully expected Jeff to show up with his hunch-backed assistant, Igor, but he 
came alone.  I was done with my third of the assignment.  Jeff was impressed 
and to him impress him was an achievement of biblical proportion.  ``I'm pretty
far along on the project,'' he explained.  ``It would actually be much easier 
except Graham made a mistake with the opcodes.  They were all being allocated 
in sequence when he added those useless special cases and I have to write a 
huge work-around routine.''  Both Mo and I nodded pretending to understand what
the wise and venerable one said.  Mo was taking a class in VLSI (Very Large 
Scale Integration) where he had to design an actual integrated circuit, a 
chip.  It was a massive project and he hadn't had time to start the project.

	Jeff was sitting, tapping his cane nervously as he said, ``Look,
I've got a cybernetics project to work on.  I don't have time to help you.''

	I'd basically set myself up to study full time for the next exam and
the final.  Theoretically I had time to help Mo and theoretically the bumble
bee can't fly due to aerodynamics.  ``I can help out,'' I foolish replied
knowing all too well Jennifer would extract her revenge on me.  She'd
received a package in the mail yesterday.  It was a ten inch cylinder, two 
inches in diameter and discretely wrapped in plain brown paper.  With a 
Marquesa de Sade smile, Jennifer had explained, ``If I lose you to that
damn class again, either we break up or I punish you.''  That package contained
my punishment and the warning was made by a woman naked save for knee-high 
riding boots, spurs and 3 foot riding crop.  It was the kind of threat you
took seriously.

	Jeff took the board again and subdivided Mo's task.  ``Okay Mo,''
he explained.  ``You simply have to convert my temporary representation
into binary form.  The base conversion routines, macro expansion and
file merging will be written for you.''  And so I shouldered nearly a third
of Mo's burden.  There were worse burdens to bare -- the cross carried by
Christ, the guilt of Judas and the contents of Jennifer's package combined 
with a two batteries and a tube of KY Jelly.

	I began staying up all night again.  I started skipping class 
and relying on the text to keep up.  Jennifer was very thorough during her
nightly hour with me.  She started bringing her `toys' down to the terminal 
room and I found myself in the second CS 502 exam, again not feeling
all that comfortable sitting down.  Just the night before, in a rather
uncharacteristic and un-lady-like manner, Jennifer had said, ``Fuck me
over because of a class and we'll see who gets fucked.''  She was quite
sweet but ferociously jealous.  Jennifer was full-chested beauty and
accepted no competing mistress, even when her rival was academic.

	The second exam was the first time I'd been to class in two weeks.
As I'd done during the first exam, I sat up in the front row the class room
because fewer people sat in that row.  This gave me more room to spread out.
On the neighboring desk to my right, I laid out my class notes and on the one 
to the left, I placed the text.  On the instructor's table, I set my now worn
Staedler eraser and two mechanical pencils each freshly filled with HP lead.  
This time I'd chosen a full night's rest rather than over winding my spring 
with two liters of Coke.  I proceeded through each question in a methodical and
thorough manner.  I was meticulous, anal retentive -- simply stated, I was
German in my approach to the exam.  After reading and rereading a question,
I'd consult my notes and the text.  I'd thoroughly think through each
answer before writing in my blue book.  All the while the professor sat
four feet away from me reading a sci-fi novel.

	In half the allotted time, I finished the exam.  Graham had given us
a gift to make up for the low grades on the first exam and first programming
assignment.  The exam was cake.  I stretched, smiled and laughed to myself.  
I'd ace this one.  I began to check my answers by rereading the exam questions.
This time I started with the header of the exam page, ``Computer Science 502, 
Exam II, Closed notes.  Closed book.''  I froze.  Looking around, I saw that 
now one else had their notes out or their book open.  I was so close to 
Professor Graham that I could smell the garlic bagel he'd had for breakfast.  
Panic set in.  The infidel CS 502 warrior was being routed by Christian
crusaders.  I'd done the unthinkable.  I'd cheated on an exam.  They 
expel me from school, my career down the tubes, a black mark on my
record and Jennifer was sure to punish me and her latest package was
over foot in length.


	Calmly, I gathered my notes and text and put them in my backpack.
No one stood up and screamed, ``Heretic!  Cheater!  Stone him!''  I zippered
the backpack.  Bob Graham did leap on top of the desk and proclaim,
``Crucify the pagan for he has blasphemed.''  No, everyone simply scribbled
away and Bob Graham took a bite of apple and turned another page.  My
books and notes put away I was no less nervous.  Graham could wait and tell
me after the fact that I was expelled from school and that the government
was deporting me to Hackensak, New Jersey.  A fellow student could turn
me in and receive a guilt free forty pieces of silver.  I made the sign
of the cross, prayed quietly for a second and attempted to check my exam.
I couldn't do it.  My thoughts were wallowing in despair.   I simply
handed in the exam without proofing it.  My fate was already etched in
stone.

	I made my way back to the dorm and told Jennifer of my plight.
She kissed me gently and took me to her bed.  I am a man and in all my
maleness, I like to be active when in bed or asleep.  For a change, I was
neither.  Jennifer simply held me, caressed me and whispered words of
reassurance.  It was not something I'd boast to the guys about.  They'd
label me a ``wimp'' or, with all the political correctness men of such an
age can muster, ``a screaming faggot.''  That afternoon was better than any 
romp Jennifer and I had ever had between the sheets.

	Armageddon came.  As Graham wrote the mean and grade distribution
on the board, the blue books were passed around.  I opened mine fully
expecting to find ``0'' written next to the word ``CHEATER''.  Instead
there was a simply formed ``83''.  My guilt quickly disapated and I
glanced up at the mean, it was an eighty-six.  I'd scored three points
lower than the mean.  With the grades so high, there was no chance for
a scale.  In disbelief, I thumbed through my exam.  Despite my 
Aryan, Teutonic, Wagnerian and basically Nazi precision, I'd made several
silly mistakes that had cost me seventeen points.  I could have had a perfect
score, if I'd only been able to check it over.  There was no way I was going
to approach Graham this time during his office hours and say, ``Excuse me
professor, I was so nervous because I cheated that I couldn't double check
my exam.  Could you possibly scale it seventeen points to I have a perfect
score?''  I was about as likely to part the Red Sea as Graham was to do
anything save expel me.

	Dejected, I joined Mo and Jeff in the conference room.  I'd
completed one-third of Mo's work and Jeff was nearly done.  ``How's the
programming doing?'' Jeff asked.

	As Mo looked down and shuffled back and forth nervously, I noticed
his exam grade, a fifteen, printed neatly on the outside of his blue book.  
``I'm still working on VLSI.  I haven't started it.''  Academics dictates that 
for every Christ there is an antichrist.  Eman is a Moslem and the university
equivalent of the prophet Mohammed.  This made Mo the anti-Mohammed!  

	Jeff, shook his head and said, ``I've got a cybernetics project, I 
can't help you out.''

	A wall-eyed computer genius with a bum leg, the anti-Mohammed, a 
girlfriend who smelled of burning leather and still, I said, ``I can help
you out.''  Again, Jeff took the chalk and dived Mo's task in half again.
I'd handle all his parsing from the intermediate form to his
data structures.  All Mo really had to do was combine the tokens and put
them out in the final form.  A six-year old who failed out of kindergarten
could handle Mo's portion of the project.

	Three nights later, I staggered back to the dorm and into bed next
to Jennifer.  I'd fallen asleep at the terminal, my head fallen against
the keyboard.  Imprinted in my forehead was not the scarlet letter `A' for
the adultery I was committing with Jennifer but the outline of the keyboard's
H-key.  I didn't know what it stood for, nor did I care.  I removed my
clothes and climbed into bed.  Jennifer stirred, her eyes fluttered open.
She looked tiredly at the clock.  It was 05:14.  She managed a half smile
and said, ``You're late roll over.''  I was too tired to protest, so I 
obediently lay on my stomach as she reached across me and pulled the 
handcuffs out of the bedside table.

	It was in that delirium of fatigue that I finished Mo's work and
staggered into the class' final.  It was worth twenty-percent of the grade.
There was no caffeine/sugar-hype and no German precision to be found.
I was tired.  Damn tired.  My relationship with Jennifer was strained and I'd 
reached my limit physically.  I took the exam.  I have no idea how I did.
I just took the damn thing handed it in and left for the terminal room.

	The program was due today.  Jeff and Mo joined me.  ``Are you done
yet?'' asked Jeff.  The question was obviously not addressed to me.

	``I now have time.  My VLSI is done,'' replied Mo fully expecting
us to drop to our knees and kiss his feet.  He must have been highly
disappointed.

	Jeff's knuckles were white as he clenched his cane.  He let out
a deep breath and said, ``I can use a couple more days to interpret
the macro tokens put out by the lex unit.  A couple more.''  Mo knew
he'd nearly been bludgeoned to death by Jeff's cane.  I was thankful that
there was no violence.  With Jeff's wall-eye and bum leg, he was just as 
likely to accidental bludgeon me with his cane.

	The first day cost us two points on our grade, the second four
and the third eight.  On the first late day, Jennifer had given me an 
ultimatum.  Since punishment didn't come any large than her last package, I 
had to chose, her or CS 502.  It was 12:45 AM and the project was three 
days late.  Jeff and I were locked in his lab and Jennifer returned home
for Christmas break.  After break, Jennifer was off for a semester 
abroad in England, and she frankly didn't want me to put a damper on her
Christmas by calling her.  There was a knock at the door to Jeff's lab.  
``Who is it?''  he growled.

	``It is I, Mohammed,'' came a plea through the door.  ``I need your 
help.  There are no computers open downstairs.  You have to let me in so I can
start my part of the project.''

	Jeff and I made eye contact with three of our four eyes and shook our
heads in disgust.  We continued working as Mo pounded on the door.  He left 
after around an hour.  At 3:57 AM, Jeff called it quits.  ``I can't
get our parts to interface.  I'll try again tomorrow afternoon.''

	My mouth stood dropped open waiting to catch flies.  Jeff, computer
genius, was calling it quits.  ``Look, they'll deduct sixteen points if
we don't hand it in by 9:00 AM.''

	``Sorry,'' he said logging out of his computer.  I stormed out of
the room taking my notes with me.  On my way to my private computing asylum
room, I passed the large public terminal room.   Mo was sitting at a
300 baud DecWriter.  Picture a computer printer with a keyboard.  The
characters we printed at an incredible slow rate on paper and back
spacing meant you'd type over the characters that were just printed.
It was a relic of years past.  Only a completely desperate person would even
attempt to work on the beast.  I stopped for a moment and did the Christian
thing.  I had a key to room over a dozen terminals.  Instead of asking Mo
to accompany me, I left.  Had I invited him, I would have had to kill him
in a slow and painful manner.  This would be a highly unChristian thing to do.

	I printed out all my code, thousands and thousands of lines.  I
wrote a note to Professor Graham.  It began, ``As of 3:57 AM, I have 
defected from my group.  Enclosed is my portion of the project.  It 
includes...''  I proceeded to summarize each portion of the project I'd 
completed.  I slid the code and the note under Graham's door and headed off to
bed. Before retiring, I phoned Jennifer at home.  She hung up on me.  There was
nothing I could do.  No all-nighters or endless hours in the computer room 
would win her back.  I went to bed and slept for twenty-one straight hours.

	In the two days before the university shut down for Christmas
break, I rested slept and gained my physical health back.  It hurt like hell
not having Jennifer there.  A couple hours before my folks were to pick me
up, I made my way down the hill to Graham's office.  He was supposed to post
the grades on his door.  I found the door to his office open and he was
talking with one of the TA's.  He looked up, saw me and said, ``Are you
here to pick up your project and final?''

	``I guess so,'' I replied.

	He pulled my project from the stack of papers.  On the very top of the
pile were three pages of DecWriter printing with the name Mo Naveeb scrawled
at the top.  In his own scrawl, the TA had written, ``0 points.  What is
this?''  Obviously this was indisputable proof of the existence of God.

	Graham looked down at my project and said, ``Here let me record this
in my grade book.''  As he jotted the grade down, he looked sort of shocked.
``You did the work of two people.'' he said, astounded.

	``I know,'' I said taking the paper from him.  I looked down.  I'd
received a hundred less eight points for being late.

	``You're quite a worker,'' He said after recording the grade for
my final.  On that, I'd pulled an 86.

	``Have a good Christmas,'' I said heading out the door.

	``Judging from how you did, you obviously will,'' he replied.
His words didn't sink in.  I kept thinking about Jennifer and the click of
the phone as she hung up on me.

	The highest average in CS 502 that semester was an eighty-three.
That was scaled to an A as was the second highest grade, a seventy-six.  I 
still feel cheated because even though Jeff scored seven points less than I 
did, he also received an A.  There was only one F given in the course that 
semester and I was thankful that Graham hadn't graded my social life because
in that case the F would have been mine and not Mo's.  The semester I took
it was the last time CS 502 was offered.  It was considered too difficult,
renumber CS 402 and the curriculum greatly reduced.  The worst part of
it all was that this saddened me more than Jennifer's leaving.

	On the wall of my office is a diploma with matching gold seals
for university and departmental honors.  Summa Cum Laude is written
below the words ``Bachelors of Computer Engineering.''  Jennifer lives
in Philadelphia with a guy named Bill.  I bet they're married by now.  Only
a fool would let Jennifer slip though his fingers by not marrying her.  Bill
had a hell of a lot more time to give Jennifer and they were very happy
last I heard.  On a rainy day, my war wound acts up, and I find it 
uncomfortable to sit.  I smile and type away happily at my keyboard.  No one 
in my office knows why I smile whenever it rains, but, then again, none of 
them survived CS 502.
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