Me, I prefer Shakespeare.

I do want to be a doctor, but I am also attracted to Shakespeare, the plots, the characters, Lear, Hamlet. This sounds weird, don’t laugh at me, but I need all of that.

ALL OF ME LIES THERE BY DAVID WATERS 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 97

Claire Hathaway was not that much older than I was but she taught Shakespeare.

“Let me get this straight. You need to get an A in my course because you are applying to medical school?”

“They did away with pre-medicine this year. Most of my classmates are taking science courses. Me, I prefer Shakespeare.”

My classmates mocked Claire because she sometimes wore mismatched nylons, one with a seam up the back and one without. I was OK with that. Hell, pantihose hadn’t been invented yet.

The day of my appointment with her she was wearing a tweed skirt that seemed too big and was rotated a bit to the left, and a gray wool sweater with an ink stain where her fountain pen had leaked. Most everyone used fountain pens in 1965. That was the year the Beatles played Sh…