Non-traditional students.

Depending on where you go to school, the words "Non-traditional" mean different things. If you're in western massachusetts or the pacific northwest, it means someone who smokes a lot of marijuana, dresses inappropriately for their gender, and designed their own major to incorporate their twin passions: ceramics and maoism, from a post-foucalt psuedo-neo-modernist perspective, and expects to graduate without taking freshman english.

However.

At large, urban universities, the term "Non-traditional student" means "old fucker, getting a degree for no discernable reason, probably with undiagnosed asperger's syndrome"

I've got two in my animal behavior class.

One is a very, very sweet woman in her mid forties, dressed with the confused good-nature of a blind four year old raised in the basement of a k-mart. She wears the type of sneakers without fasteners designed for the elderly and stroke victims who have lost the manual dexterity to do laces or velcro, despite daily displaying the flexibility to take painstaking notes in four colors of pen, of everything the professor says regardless of the relevence. I once watched her take down the professors personal, off-topic reverie on the subject of how nice it is to have a classroom with a window.

She is very, very concerned about the topic of animal behavior. As it relates to her cats. She was openly disappointed that the professor considered "Why don't my cats like it when I bring men home?" an inadequate topic for a term paper. She was very frustrated that, deciding to do a project on Chickadees at the bird feeder, that no one had done any serious scientific studies concerning backyard birds in her neighborhood. Not that she could read any, because she doesn't have high-speed internet at home, and doesn't have the time to download PDFs over dial up. In fact, she's very confused as to what a PDF is. And, not too clear on the whole "database" and "scientific journal" and "peer-reviewed" or, for that matter...the scientific method.

The other is an eager yet slow man in his late forties. He has the resentful, passive-agressive air of a deeply immature individual, crushed by high expectations, leading to an unspoken distrust and objectification of the opposite sex. What I mean is, I'm pretty sure he's about one more thwarted gesture away from murdering a prostitute, covering her body in the snapped stems of thirty years of long-stem roses, and being discovered by the police at his mother's house, nude and sipping tea in the kitchen as she launders his blood-stained clothes.

In other words, He's the type of man that would describe himself as a nice guy . He's probably once divorced and since can't understand why 18 year old girls don't find his sweaty, desperate attentions charming, or so terrified of the purported machinations of females that he's a an angry virgin at 47. He has the chubby, grimy childishness of a priest. If he read Lolita, he wouldn't know not to be on Humbert's side.

I don't dislike him; it's just that he's so discomfiting.

Normally I don't get so much insight into the psychosexual dynamic of strangers. However, for the past few weeks, we've been studying sexual selection, mating systems, and the like. Evolution is about sex and death, and animal behavior is about evolution. It's a small class, and the professor runs it openendedly enough that human behavior and unspoken prejudices are easily observed.

Very early in the class we read a study on out of pair mating in mountain bluebirds. It was meant as a diagnostic critique. As students, we were meant to notice deficiencies in the article, chief among them the unfounded comparison the author was making to adultery in humans. This guy was visibly confused. The thought of cheating on a partner not being adultery, even in bluebirds, or being natural...was upsetting to him. He couldn't understand it. He has trouble not referring to mating pairs as "Mother and Father" or "Mummy and Daddy" whatevers...

As we've been getting more into sexual selection, mate preference, and mating systems, he's seemed more and more confused and upset. He can't quite understand how differing mating systems work. He's carrying his rigid romantic structures into the animal kingdom; he can't beleive that, naturally, some males never mate, and almost all females will. He can't imagine mating occurring in a value neutral world. He's constantly asking "What kind of sex ratio would lead to that system- (polyandry, polygyny, polygynandry)?", no matter how many times the professor reminds him that in nearly all animals, there is a 1:1 sex ratio.

He can't believe that polygyny would occur when there are enough males for each female to have their own mate, because that would go against one of the founding principles of the great American self-comforting romantic myth; that there is someone out there for everyone. It's a fairy tale for children, fat girls and short boys, and acne'd and awkward adolescents of both genders, administered sparingly to adults after breakups, like neosporin after a bagel-slicing accident.

And the reason he's going to kill a whore some day (et cetera, lipstick, weeping, mommy, the house is surrounded 'not my baby!' by the time the police got there he'd already, foreskin in a jar, religous upbringing, sponge baths, real doll...he was always so quiet, the perfect neighbor, really) is because he's unable to distinguish the natural world from his personal world. He gets this look on his face when the professor discusses the female need for resources and the male need for mating- it's as if you can already see the green glow of the public school surplus 386 computer monitor as he's posting to usenet later that night, about how science proves that all women are whores, but not all put out.

To him, a crop full of partially disected insects and a kenmore microwave are the same, and should entitle the givers to the same priveleges. But, he'd never be honest enough to use an escort, and pay and tip her, and understand the limits of the transaction. No. He'd pay her, and expect her to fall in love with him. He'd present some flowers from the supermarket, or his mother's yard, stems partially crushed from a death-like grip in his palm. He'd be polite, nervous. He'd do things he'd think of as chivalrous. But he'd expect her to bend the rules, treat him as special as his mother told him he deserves. He'd expect her to stop him on the way out, give him back his money, kiss him deeply and be his. And when she didn't, because it's her job, he'd strangle her, blank faced.