Chapter 13

13

With his mother’s help and through some of her high school connections, Abraham Lincoln Panim became a freshman at the local college, but he was enrolled in night school, which was his own choice. He simply felt better taking courses during the evening, and he thought that he could handle this new challenge better during the evening than during the day, and his mother agreed.

The new freshman enrolled in liberal arts, and he was sent off to college by both his mother and Mrs. Panim in the early fall.

“I am so proud of you,” Mrs. Panim said upon his first day as a college student. “You look just great, and you are going to get in fine with the other students.”

“They will be so impressed at how smart you are, and I am sure you will make friends right away,” said Mrs., Stottle.

“I hope so … I am kind of nervous,” Abraham Lincoln Stottle said to the two ladies, as he headed out the door with his mother, who drove her son to college on this first day.

The two got into the car and sped off.

“Mom, I am a bit nervous,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said as the car approached the school. “What do I do, what do I say … ?”

“Just be yourself, and everything will work out fine,” replied Mrs. Panim, who tried not to show it, but she was as nervous, or even more nervous, than her son was.

They pulled up to the school, and Mrs., Panim stopped the car.

“Son, this is it,” Mrs. Panim said.

“Mom, I am so nervous.”

“Try not to be. Be yourself. Be ‘ABRAHAM LINCOLN PANIM,’ and everything will be fine.”

The boy kissed his mother and exited the car. He had a scarf around his neck, which he lifted over his face, both to protect himself from the cooler autumn air whisking around the campus and to cover up his face.

As he approached the building, he stood on a long line of people waiting to get in. He stood on the line, behind a female student.

The female student, long blond hair all bundled up in a heavy coat, turned to him, and she was wearing dark glasses, and he saw her with a guide dog. He figured that she was blind. “Man, it is cold out here. I wish they would open up the door already. I am frozen.”

“Yes, it is a bit cold out here,” Abraham Lincoln Panim replied, talking through the scarf that was covering his face, all but his eyes.

“Boy, you must be really cold,” the girl said, reaching out and feeling his scarf over most of his face. “I wish I had a scarf like that.”

“Well, I … well … I kind of like the scarf around my face.”

“It kind of muffles your voice, I can barely hear you—but look, the line is finally moving!”

The line moved, and the students went to their classes.

“See you sometime,” the girl said.

“See you around,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said, as he looked for room 222, the room he needed to get to for his first class.

Finding the room, he walked in, sat down in the back corner of the class room, but did not take off his coat, nor did he remove his scarf from his face.

The teacher finally came into the class, a tall, thin man with practically no hair on his head.

“Hello, I am Mr. Figg, and I am going to be teaching you English … sir, are you staying for tea or are you about to leave?”

All eyes turned to Abraham Lincoln Panim, still all bundled up with his jacket on and his scarf being made even tighter as he realized the teacher was speaking about him.

Abraham Lincoln Panim stood up, took his jacket off, put it on the back of his chair, but kept his scarf on.

“Sorry, I have a cold and don’t want to pass it on to anyone else,” he told the class, as sweat poured down from seemingly everywhere on his body.

The teacher was not paying attention at this point, and the class began, with Abraham Lincoln Panim continuing to wear his scarf through this class and into the other classes he took that evening and during that first week of college.