HOW HIGH THE MOON

This snippet of a story describes how embarrased I became while attending a social function in my senior year of college.

HOW HIGH THE MOON?

My last year of college culminated with my being elected president of my fraternity. In addition, I was inducted into the National Journalist Society (Pi Delta Epsilon) in recognition of my writing for the school paper and for creating a fraternity paper called, The Green Gate, which continues to this day. In addition, I was elected Senior Class Treasurer.

This gave me an opportunity to hobnob with Harvey Davis, the president of Stevens Institute of Technology. He invited the four class officers to attend a formal tea at his campus residence where we met some of his friends, all dignitaries in the field of science and engineering. It was a scene straight out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The widow of the man (Frank Gilbert) whose life story became a feature film, Cheaper by the Dozen, graced us with her presence, as did a famous scientist and explorer whose name has slipped from my memory. This gent cornered me and posed a simple engineering riddle, along the lines of: What is black and white and read all over? My response, a blank stare, seemed to take him more by surprise than his asking me to solve an elementary brain teaser. He walked away, dumbfounded. My inability to solve the riddle exposed my lack of engineering aptitude and made me squirm.

A week or so later, I squirmed even more during a job interview, described next.

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