Word: vag
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...knew already how the conversation would run, for he had participated in countless similar dialogues. His old friend would say "Hi, Vag. Say, where are you going to school now?" And Vag would answer "Harvard." "What are you studying there?" Old Friend would ask. "Oh, I'm a liberal arts student," Vag would reply. "I guess you might say I'm sort of a history major...
...then, as inevitably as the sun rises, Old Friend would say, "Oh. Going to be a teacher, eh?" Vag could never completely understand the jump in reasoning from the data he had given to the conclusion that he was going to be a teacher. He knew it had something to do with practicality, for Old Friend would be studying accounting or medicine or journalism or something similar. But Vag could never understand why it wouldn't be equally logical, practically speaking, that he was studying to become an historian. Yet Old Friend never seemed to ask this question...
...probably just as well, for Vag would have had to give the same answer he always gave to the question of whether he was going to be a teacher. "No," he would reply. "Not necessarily. That is, I don't really know what I'm going...
...then Old Friend would have responded with the same quizzical glance, that now familiar look which implied so clearly that Vag was bats to be spending four years studying for nothing...
This glance never failed to make Vag uneasy. He always felt that he should be explaining himself to his friend, that he should be justifying his choice of a college and of a curriculum. He remembered hearing an address once by President Griswold of Yale on "The Practical Value of a Liberal Education," and he remembered that it had sounded very convincing at the time. But strain as he might, he could not recall any of the points, and he suspected that they would not sound as convincing coming from his mouth anyway...