Professors

        Professors all wear glasses. The lenses are usually thick, scratched and dirty (as are the professors).
        Men who are professors have a big bald patch at the front. At the back they have either long, frizzy hair or an even bigger bald patch.
        Women who are professors have grey hair that looks like cloth. It hasn't been combed since they were 12.
        All professors have strange-sounding names. No-one called John or Julie ever got to be a professor. Kreinstoff and MacNamackie are more like it.
        Professors cannot write anything that other people can read. If people can read your writing, you won't ever get to be a professor.
        Professors quite often invent things. These rarely work.
        Students come to listen to professors. These also rarely work.
        There are two main sorts of professors. Absent-minded professors can think but can't remember. Mad professors can remember but can't think. The very best professors are both, and can do neither.
        Professors are probably made of chalk.
        Professors wear too-big clothes that look like a bull has trampled over them. Exception: sometimes they wear too-long coats that were once white, and which look like several bulls have trampled all over them (and done a good deal more, too, while they were at it).
        In their pockets, professors have leaky pens, glass rods, dead insects, year-old handkerchiefs, grubby scraps of paper, used postage stamps, radioactive sources, cogs, biscuits and cupro-nickel spoons.
        Professors mumble to themselves all the time, repeating strange, foreign words, then suddenly shouting loudly only to frown a moment later and continue mumbling. No-one knows why.
        Professors understand everything in the universe except small children.

So

Professors are much the same as other grown-ups, really.

Illustration by Roy Bartle
Image size: approx. 60K.