How does a cowboy get from the ranch to teaching at a university?
My dad told me this story a few times over the years. The neighbour’s ranch was down the road from the farm on which my dad grew up near Mannville, Alberta, in Western Canada. When Dad was sixteen, he started working for the owner, Harry, as a ranch hand, and he got to know Harry’s kids who were about his own age.
Harry and his wife had three children: Ben, Dianne, and Jake. Ben was good in school, so one day someone came up with the nickname, “the professor”, which he found to be profoundly insulting. He insisted he was going to grow up to be a cowboy, but people kept teasing him that he was going to be a professor. Of course, to a ranch kid, there’s nothing worse than being labelled a city slicker!
It was all in fun, but that nickname stuck like a burr even though he hated it. He kept insisting he loved ranching, and he was going to be a cowboy!
Can’t life be odd?
Although his friends and family remained in the small town where they grew up and few people at the time left for college or university, it was like a seed had been planted in Ben’s mind. Even though he’d hated being called “professor” as a child, it must’ve caused him to think about it, because after high school, he went on to university to study mathematics, the first of his family to acquire post-secondary education.
Eventually, he attended university in Colorado to learn higher levels of mathematics. Ultimately, he had a career teaching mathematics in Austin, Texas – as a professor. He taught the professors who taught mathematics at the university!
I don’t know if Ben ever thought about how he ended up being a professor, but my dad sure remembered. It was that hated nickname!