I learned from an ex-student from MIT, who had accidentally found me on the World Wide Web, that she had a little crush on me in 1983, the year I joined the Institute as an assistant professor. She thought that this was also true of all my women students at the time. The news quite stunned me, too. Twenty-five years ago I did my best not to notice such things both because of my profession, which I took with utmost seriousness, and because of the severe repercussions of any wrongdoing of this ilk. As far as I can remember, this was one of the reasons why I resorted to wearing three-piece suits, which could not but keep reminding me all the while of the constraints of the world around me. Like a youthful knight in clumsy armor, I was protected from within first and foremost.