enter honest abe

I can't believe Honest Abe has lain hidden in our distributed class for so long. He's just amazing. The bomb, even. Today he gave a short presentation on his project in front of the class, during which he exhibited more facets of his personality than I would have thought existed, based on his placid, withdrawn appearance - straight out of one of the more austere provinces of China. No, he's insouciant like you wouldn't believe. Reminded me a little of J. P., whose company I rather sorely miss in the staid, humorless academic environment I now find myself in. Honest Abe started off with a telling disclaimer: "I didn't want to do this, but [his project partner] insisted." Little did we know that that was only the beginning. "It's a very simple concept," he shot incredulously at Stripes when the latter wouldn't stop bombarding him with questions. "Ey, ey, ey, guys," he shot at the Indian Table (which, you will not be surprised to learn, did not include me) like an imperious TA, when they were interrupting his soliloquy with their snickers.

Speaking of imperious TAs, the TA for this class, on whom we've decided to bestow the singularly apposite nickname of Abbu (from Aladin), yelled at Nicky and me the other day when we told him airily that we hadn't started on the project. "What have you been doing for the past two months?" he demanded. I confess that I was less absorbed in scrambling to come up with an excuse than I was in trying to stifle my laughter, because Abbu's voice is such that it may well have been lifted from Stitch in Lilo and Stitch. Stitch or Jar Jar Binks, now that I think about it. The point is, it's not something that you can hear and not burst out laughing. Lordy Lord. I just remembered a Hindi short story we had in the seventh grade: "Abbu Khan ki Bakri" - or "Abbu Khan's Goat". He's Abbu, of course. But who is goat???

In the end Honest Abe had single-handedly elicited more laughter from the class than Casper had managed in an entire semester with his poor (and no-doubt well-rehearsed) jokes. Not even Speedy could stifle his laughter. And the Indian Table had somehow managed to acquire popcorn during this strange interlude, and were munching on it with open mouth, as is their wont. One might say it was high time we had someone like Honest Abe in one of our classes, because Honest Abe was quite obviously having a high time.

A note on the HYPOCHORISM: I decided to name him Honest Abe because of his brutal and often hilarious honesty in saying things that the rest of us would have shrunk from saying in front of a professor or a class filled with innocent minds. Things like, "Personally, I think HTTPS is rather stupid. I can understand why you'd want to encrypt passwords. But it's stupid to encrypt everything. If you post something on Facebook, you cannot expect it to be safe." His honesty is why we decided to give him the Nobel Peace Prize this year.