Have you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall?  That you could be an invisible observer of some meaningful event?  Perhaps your child’s first date or her first day in the Oval Office?  

Lately, I have been wishing I could be present, but unseen in a specific Boston University classroom in which fifteen graduate students are studying neuropsychology.  They all appear to be in their mid-twenties.  Except for one eighty-nine-year-old named “Peter”.  The professor invited him to join the class  because there was no room for him in her undergraduate version of the course.

So every Tuesday he and his walker take a Lyft or Uber to BU, and the students always save a seat for him. 

Peter is interested in the brain and he knows quite a bit about it.  But he was not happy with his performance on the first exam because he had just as much trouble remembering the brain’s many parts as he does remembering names of the people he meets at parties..  Since he’s not taking the course for credit, the only thing that hurt was his pride.

But I give him a lot of credit for taking on a challenge like that on top of Parkinson’s and an approaching 90^th birthday. 

I would love to observe that class, but only if I could be a fly on the wall.