I used to see this man walking down Main Street every morning on my way to school. I nicknamed him Bob and every morning I’d think, “There’s Bob!” He was pretty old and shabby looking and usually just walking slowly, smoking a cigarette. I assumed he was homeless and a bum, and I never gave it much thought beyond that.
AND THEN…I got to high school. I walked into my Latin 1 class and guess who was there. Oh yes…it was Bob. Bob, my homeless bum, is a Latin scholar who graduated from Tufts and lectured at Harvard and can recite the entirety of Virgil’s Aeneid. He speaks 6 languages fluently. Oh yeah, and he’s not homeless or even poor; he walks rather than drives because he likes to. He taught me Latin for four years and I now respect him more than anyone on Earth- and to think I passed him off as a homeless bum. Who am I to judge?
