Page 254 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
one of the cold-related spansules that were on top of his dresser. It was that evening that I experienced the excitement and the great academic visions referred to above; and it was that night that, with my head spin- ning and heart pumping, I just could not fall asleep. It was the next morning that I discovered the real source of my feelings of academic empowerment: Geoff ’s cold pill turned out to have been Dexedrine, and I had had my first flirtation with amphetamines. Unfortunately, I’m con- strained to say “my first,” because, unable to break my well-developed habit of waiting until the last minute before starting to pound out what turned out to be a pretty good product, I could now resort to Geoff ’s pharmacy to augment my natural adrenaline if it seemed necessary. That occurred only a few more times while I was in college. (Notice: I did not say law school, but we’ll deal with that later.)
Of the courses that excited me, one taught by Professor William Kennick proved to be the most important. While Ancient and Medieval Philosophy started with the Greeks (which, Plato and Aristotle aside, did not do much for me; I could never readily recall, nor care a lot about, the difference between Anaximander and Anaxagoras), it fortu- nately reached into and beyond the medieval. Thus, Anselm (1033–1109), the Archbishop of Canterbury, was covered. (Saint) Anselm was impor- tant for two key reasons: First, he is the father of the ontological argument (the proof of the existence of God that proceeds entirely from the definition of God, at least Anselm’s definition); and second, he was the subject of a paper of mine that received an unheard of, or at least wholly unanticipated, A from Professor Kennick and would thus become the subject of my senior thesis.
I would be totally remiss were I not to say that it is no coincidence that Anselm is the middle name of my firstborn grandson, Jesse: When my firstborn son, Daniel, went to Amherst, he wrote his thesis—one that was a hell of a lot better than mine—on Anselm’s proof as well. Of course, Danny’s thesis proved the existence of God (whereas mine had not; ever politic, and perhaps not God-fearing enough, I had taken no position), which must have come as a relief to Professor Kennick, Dan- ny’s thesis advisor (!), or to anyone who reads either it or this paragraph
• 236 •