YOU! Close the door and lock it. Class begins on time. No latecomers!

It was the first day of class. My final college class.

And the professor was a madman.

A MAD man, actually. Fred Brewer eventually told us he was a former editor of MAD Magazine, the irreverent comic-book-style periodical. He’d served as editor of the British edition.

But this was Indiana University in June of 1980, my senior year. All I had left before leaving campus was one class plus a role in IU’s summer production of The Music Man. I was a Telecom major and thought one last writing class would be a kick.

Indeed. No actually kicking took place, but there was a lot of shouting and banging on the locked classroom door.

Our first day of class, Professor Brewer walked up and down the aisles and gave us each a punctuation mark from an old-time printing press. He had a bucket full of type and managed to give each student a different punctuation mark to research.

I got a semi-colon.

We had a week to research our mark in IU’s huge library and write a report.

Thanks to newspapers.com, I now know Mr. Brewer had a soft spot in his heart for the old-fashioned printing method. The Indianapolis Star wrote a feature article about his garage-based Raintree Press in 1977:

We returned to class (did I mention it met just once per week?) and turned in our reports. We may have had to give an oral report, too, but since I’m one of the very few humans who don’t mind speaking in front of others, it didn’t bother me enough to imprint on my memory.

As we handed in our papers and, unfortunately, our tiny punctuation mark (I’d hoped to keep mine), the professor walked to the back of the room and locked the door.

The banging began almost immediately. It was awful. The top half of the door was a window, so we saw the faces of our late classmates. Some pleading, some angry, some still half-asleep.

“Unlock that door and you get an F in this class!” Brewer roared.

A few of the non-punctual students slid their punctuation papers under the door and slunk away. Brewer retrieved them, tore the papers into pieces, and dropped them in the trash can.

Remember, this was before personal computers. Chances are, there wasn’t a second copy tucked away somewhere, to be handed in the next week.

I’ve gotta say, I would have expected a MAD Magazine editor to be fun. Maybe even, you know, stoned. He was a beast.

When he handed our papers back the next week, Brewer called me out about my use of an ellipsis.

You know … the oft-misnamed ellipsis.

He hollered at me, after first confirming I was a journalism student. Then he really dug in with the insults – interrupted several times by knocks on the door.

It was chaos.

Did I mention this was a summer class? And the final class for my college degree?

I. Simply. Didn’t. Care.

So I hollered back at him. In radio and TV, a newscaster might be handed a script while already broadcasting live; he or she needed the script to be written – and punctuated – in such a way as to help make the story as easy to read as possible. An ellipsis indicated a pause.

He pushed back, again insulting all know-it-all journalism students. My response matched his volume and advised him to speak with journalism professors so they could enlighten him.

The rest of the summer session passed quickly, with an assortment of creative assignments, as the former editor of MAD Magazine stretched us nearly to the breaking point.

A few people walked out of class when he hollered at them. The latecomers learned not to bother showing up even 20 seconds tardy.

I realized how much I liked punctuation. And grammar. And writing.

Professor Brewer continued to holler at me. I hollered right back, defending whatever he’d criticized, and wondering if I should apply to law school.

I couldn’t quite tell if my professor (who never did share any stories about being a MAD Magazine editor, much to our disappointment) resented my pushing back. As long as he didn’t flunk me, I didn’t really care. And it felt sort of fun.

A few weeks later, when my report card arrived in the mail – the final grade of my college career – I got my answer.

A+

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