A Big Blue Sweater Tale

Our life revolves around the university academic year. It is now the time for final exams with graduation on Saturday. Recently we attended a year-end honors banquet for my husband's department. At the end of this banquet the senior engineering students have the opportunity to roast the professors. All in good fun, eh? Actually, they tend to be quite tasteful with their jesting. This year my knitting came into play.

In their Power Point Roast they put a photo of my husband on the screen. The student said, "Dr. F is known for having quite a collection of sweaters. One of them is very large and very blue." (I knew exactly which sweater they meant.) He went on to explain that Dr. F was explaining a concept to the class and used his own love of cookies as an analogy in explaining the concept. (I'm not an engineer so the details didn't make much sense to me.) Then they showed a picture of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster on the screen next to my husband's photo. Everyone had a good laugh about the Cookie Monster Blue Sweater and I probably laughed harder than anyone. Later the students asked me if I was ok with it and I said, "Of course. It was perfect." What was really sweet is that they had actually emailed my husband to wear his sweater to school so they could get a photo of it. He became suspicious and told them that I knit all his sweaters and I would be there. He was afraid they might hurt my feelings. Hey, they are right, the sweater is big and blue. Now I get a chuckle every time he wears The Cookie Monster Sweater. The next morning he was shaking his head as he told me that this is the first time in 30 years of teaching that he realized that the students notice what he is wearing.

I made him pause for a photo this morning as he left for work. Poor man! No one likes to have their photo taken at that time of the morning, but he was a good sport, as always.