Partly Cloudy, 64°
The bottom dropped out of Elliot Thomas’s ’13 stomach when he walked into PHIL1210: “Material Wealth and the Impoverished Soul” and realized the hobo he had regularly avoided on Thayer Street for the past two years was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Anthony Lawrence.
“I recognized him immediately as the guy who hangs out near CVS,” said Thomas. “Not many professors—or people in general—make such daring fashion choices as Professor Lawrence.”
Eschewing jackets and coats, Lawrence merely wraps a discarded dormitory rug around his shoulders during the winter. He cites classical philosophers as his reasons for living in a pair of moth-eaten sweatpants from the Rhode Island School of Design and foraging in dumpsters for his meals.
“According to Plato, the perfect ‘form’ exists only in a metaphysical space beyond our universe,” the professor mumbled, munching a half-eaten banana he had fished out of the trash can. “Why strive for the unachievable perfect ‘pants,’ or perfect ‘meal,’ in our limiting earthly environment?”
“Aristotle’s ‘golden mean’ postulates that we must live life halfway between two vices,” he said, wandering into CVS to enjoy the central heating system. “In this case, my rug-jacket strikes the golden balance between the respective evils of shirtlessness and parkas that make you look like a marshmallow.”
Lawrence is regularly asked to leave the CVS after accosting customers with philosophical ruminations in the shampoo aisle, forcing him to deliver his impromptu lectures to passersby on the street.
“It’s so awkward running into my professor on Thayer Street,” Thomas said. “Whenever I need new toothpaste from CVS, there he is, shouting at random people.”
“I would acknowledge him, but I don’t want to get sucked into one of those hour-long conversations where you’re just nodding in response to everything he says,” added Thomas. “That would be too much like lecture.”
