Flameproof

The dining hall was crowded and there was apparently no place else to sit so he slipped into the remaining empty chair at a corner table with an apologetic nod. He ate slowly and methodically, first a forkful of potatoes, then a bit of meat, then to string beans and then back to potatoes and start all over.

One by one the others at the table left, leaving him alone with a red-headed senior who, unnerved by his meticulous method of eating, stood up to leave, pushing the table away while rising. The heavy wood knocked into him, striking his chest. Desperately, he said, "Please, be more careful."

The red-head laughed, apparently somewhat puzzled by his strange behavior, and inquired if he was fragile. He semed upset by this, hesitated, and then burst out, "Yes, you see, I'm made of glass."

Curious, the senior sat down again. "It started last year," he continued, "when I was taking both Chem 20 and Chem 40. Labs every afternoon and after a while I began to imagine that I was an Erlenmeyer flask--Pyrex, you know, and shaped like this," he said as he waved his hands vaguely about.

"I felt as if I were surrounded by a glass wall, cut off from the rest of the College by my continual labs. In short, I was in an Erlenmeyer flask and was slowly merging with it.

"I tried to escape. I went out for House dramatics, hoping that I could enter into the world of Bohemia but I was cut off from that land by the glass wall. My acting--like a robot, they told me. I tried growing a beard but it was no use. I knew it was wrong, knew I was nothing but a Pyrex flask with a fiberglass beard. So I gave up and shaved it off. I began to think that perhaps it was my fate to become an Erlenmeyer flask. But fate or not, still I struggled.

"I knew, though, that it was no use when I began to see people as walking biochemical factories. That was the day I resigned myself to being made of glass, to being an Erlenmeryer flask."

He sighed, carefully finished off the last of his desert, stood up, slipped, fell, and smashed into tiny fragments.