Studying Student Shares Intimate Vertical Moment With Mansueto Window Washer
By Chris Deakin
Nov. 7, 2012
This Tuesday, at 10:45 a.m., a true and vertical bond was formed between second-year College student Ralph Stevenson and two-year Mansueto window-washing veteran Mike Howard.Time stood still and erect, aligned with the intensely human and precisely plumb moment created when Ralph glanced up from his Spanish textbook and Mike set down his squeegee. I knew my gaze was on the Y-axis, exclaimed Ralph breathlessly, but for those few, long seconds, I couldnt tell what direction I was looking in, except that it definitely wasnt sideways. From 10:45 to 10:46, every horizontal trouble fell away, and there existed no space but the space that dropped from Mike’s eyes through the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library ceiling and the space that rose from Ralphs.
This is why I get up at four o’clock every morning, said Mike, a Chicago native who has spent 17 years washing windows. If I can allow only gravity to direct my sight, and in so doing form an all-too-fleeting unity with a collegiate below, then my work is done. That and making the glass clean. The two remained in each others vertical company for an entire vertical minute, until the washing was complete and Mike slid down the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library building like it was a slide.
