Minneapolis, May 24, 2075

Eric Nelson, a University of Minnesota ESL teacher known for driving students crazy with excessive feedback on their grammar, died Thursday afternoon at Caribou in Dinkytown, where he often went to read his students’ work and spill coffee on it.  He was reading a sentence with mistakes in word forms, tense, voice, sentence structure, and punctuation when he suddenly stood on a chair, shouted something incomprehensible, and collapsed, striking his head against a table as he fell and splashing the remains of his double latté on a nearby customer, who was taken to Boynton Health Service, treated for minor burns, and released.  Mr. Nelson was 125.

Born on May 24, 1950, to humble middle-class parents, Mr. Nelson had an ordinary childhood and an undistinguished academic career.  He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a major in linguistics in 1972.  Always inclined to seek the path of least resistance, he continued at the same university as a graduate student in TESL (Teaching English to Suffering Learners) and, though his academic record was mediocre, somehow managed to be hired at the university’s Minnesota English Language Program, where he continued to work until his death. 

Several of his former students, interviewed yesterday by telephone, said that Mr. Nelson had influenced their lives.  “He changed my whole attitude toward grammar,” said Abby Moreira from Brazil.  “I used to think grammar was stimulating, logical, and worth studying; now I see that it’s boring, chaotic, and useless.”

Mr. Nelson is survived by his cat, Emma, who was recently listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest living cat, at 74.