(Note: Mr. Epsicopo's European history class is a college class)
As the bell rang for the first class of the morning, Ruggiero grimaced at the lecture notes on his desk. Having lived for over seven hundred years, he had experienced many horrible things, and yet none had left quite the impression on the old Italian than the topic of today’s discussion: The Black Death. He could still remember the carts of dead bodies, the flames of mass funeral pyres and the general woe of the time as if it had just ended yesterday. Such was the amazing ability of memory his mother left him.
Taking a deep breath as the first students began to file into their seats, Ruggiero shoved all the thoughts of woe and dread from his mind. It would not do for the students to see their history professor scared of something that was in the past… If only they had seen what I’ve seen he thought, walking over to the chalk board and writing Yersinia Pestis in big letters as the tardy bell rang. Looking over the classroom, he saw a couple seats empty.
“Alright, who can tell me the more common name for this disease, and what era in European history it is most associated with? You have until I finish checking roll to formulate an answer,†he boomed, sitting down at his desk to mark down absences.
As the bell rang for the first class of the morning, Ruggiero grimaced at the lecture notes on his desk. Having lived for over seven hundred years, he had experienced many horrible things, and yet none had left quite the impression on the old Italian than the topic of today’s discussion: The Black Death. He could still remember the carts of dead bodies, the flames of mass funeral pyres and the general woe of the time as if it had just ended yesterday. Such was the amazing ability of memory his mother left him.
Taking a deep breath as the first students began to file into their seats, Ruggiero shoved all the thoughts of woe and dread from his mind. It would not do for the students to see their history professor scared of something that was in the past… If only they had seen what I’ve seen he thought, walking over to the chalk board and writing Yersinia Pestis in big letters as the tardy bell rang. Looking over the classroom, he saw a couple seats empty.
“Alright, who can tell me the more common name for this disease, and what era in European history it is most associated with? You have until I finish checking roll to formulate an answer,†he boomed, sitting down at his desk to mark down absences.
