When I took a linguistics class at Weber State, my peers and I were soon referring to the subject as "sadistics."
Surely, I thought, the linguistics class here at Education Week would be sparsely attended, allowing me a reprieve from the "human sardine" feeling. Frequently, classes this week have been filled to capacity, and if BYU students can actually fit into these desks, they must be tiny. Then again, I'm 6-2.
I make a whale of a sardine.
Seating myself in the Lee Library, I took a long, filling breath, inhaling the wonderful smell of personal space — my own personal space. Indoors. Yet, minute by minute, man by man, woman by woman, that space gradually diminished. People were within five seats of me. Then four. Then three. Then, before I fully grasped what was happening, I was shoulder to shoulder with someone.
Sardined.
I admit that, at first, I didn't like the guy. He was cramping my personal space, which I'm pretty sure is a crime in other countries. Perhaps sensing my disgruntlement, he spoke first, defrosting the uneasiness with conversation.
He was an accountant.
I was a student.
He rooted for Cougars.
I rooted for Utes.
He served a mission to Hong Kong.
I . . . I also served a mission to Hong Kong.
Pardoning his aforestated collegiate loyalties, I found words leaping from my mouth, asking him, in Cantonese, if he could still speak his mission language.
Answering in Cantonese, he said that, sadly, he could not.
A man who served in Hong Kong and has a sense of irony!
Observing our uncanny connection, a certain brother on my right shook his head and whispered to himself, "Only here. Only at Education Week."
Education Week, I've realized, is not just about classes. It's primarily about people, and as children of our Heavenly Father, we have more things in common than we have in disparity. Surely, I thought, at an event like this, Heavenly Father wants us to not only gain knowledge, but to meet people as well.
I became even more sure of this thought when I heard who Grandpa met.
(Michael Madson is a returned missionary from the China Hong Kong Mission. He is currently a freelance writer and a student of English and French at Weber State University. His epic fantasy novel, "Lady in White," will be released in October by Mother's House Publishing.)