Doctor Hu?
I received a call early this morning from my friend (aptly referred to as “Half Pint” in my phone). The call woke me up, and running on only a few hours of sleep I nearly let it go to voicemail. I’m not sure what caused me to answer the phone. Maybe it was the universe conspiring towards a greater good. Maybe I accidentally answered it while trying to silence the phone. I honestly don’t remember. Had I let the phone go to voicemail I wouldn’t have even remembered she called in the first place until I would have woken up several hours later. But knowing the kind of person Half Pint is I made a quick assessment. There are exactly two reasons Half Pint will contact me. 1) She will text if she has something funny to tell me and 2) she will call if she has something amazing to tell me. So I answered the phone and tried my best to conceal the fact that I was just regaining consciousness.
“What up?” I asked, confident that my grogginess was hidden.
“Wow, I’m surprised you’re awake,” she said, possibly out of irony. “I have something amazing to tell you.”
She went on to tell me how she is taking a class at TCU because it is suppose to be the ultimate blow off class lead by the ultimate blow off professor. But to her dismay she just found out that the professor will no longer be teaching that class (probably for obvious reasons). Amazing? Not quite. The punchline however…
“The new professor is Prof. Bi Ying Hu. And she has a Ph.D.” Half Pint paused for dramatic effect, waiting to see if I was catching on.
I was starting to wake up. “Wait. You don’t mean…”
“My new professor is Doctor Hu!!!!”
You know those moments in movies where the main character is sleeping then their alarm clock goes off and they ecstatically jumps out of bed with the biggest smile on their face shouting, “It’s my birthday!” or something along those lines. Well, that was me. Literally. Except I jumped up out of my bed and shouted, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!!!!”
The possibilities were endless. My mind was riddled with a stream of Doctor Who jokes with no end in sight. So I started suggesting some of them to Half Pint, and just to name a few:
- When you go to class for the first time on Monday, arrive a few minutes late just to make sure you catch everyone’s attention. Walk into the classroom and act completely mystified exclaiming, “Holy shit! It IS bigger on the inside!”
- Refer to Doctor Hu only as “The Doctor,” but refer to yourself as “The Master.”
- Say “Allons-y!” loud enough for everyone to hear every time Doctor Hu starts a lecture.
- If Doctor Hu has a TA, refer to them as “the Doctor’s companion.” Bonus points if their name is either Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Rory, or Mickey.
- Run into class one day and shout, “The Cybermen have taken over. Run for your lives!!!”
- Raise your hand in the middle of a lecture and say, “I never thought I’d say this, but I really want Matt Smith back.”
- Wear a bow tie and suspenders to class. When people ask why simply say, “Bow ties are cool.”
- If there is a crack on the wall in the classroom you have to urge everyone NOT to go near it.
- At some point during a lecture pretend to receive a phone call from Winston Churchill.
- Get a sonic screwdriver sound effect app and use it every time you need to open your backpack.
- Print out a life size door poster of the TARDIS and put it on the door to the classroom. (Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely)
- Walk up to Doctor Hu at the end of a lecture and go, “Thank you for the lecture. As a gift, I give you air from my lungs.” Proceed to breathe on Doctor Hu.
- Ask Doctor Hu a question and somehow work “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey,” into the conversation. (any form of “wibbly-wobbly, _____-_____” will do just fine.”
- Whenever Doctor Hu walks into the room, stand up and in a raspy monotonous voice shout, “Exterminate!!! Exterminate!!!”
Knowing Half Pint, she is bound to do at least four of these during the course of the semester. And I can’t wait to hear about them. Allons-y, Half Pint.
