Is Your Mother Home?

Sometimes as a teacher I get very worried for my students.

Let me be clear, my students aren't the best students.  I used to think they were atypical.  Before I began to teach in the crazy adjunct world of private almost community college, I believed everyone was a smart person with maybe multiple layers of stupid smothering that person and stifling that person and as a teacher it was my job to set that smart person free.  Think STAND AND DELIVER or DANGEROUS MINDS.  Those are the teacher movies that are the most pleasant to think about:  bright students who just need one more chance.  Or three more chances if they muck it up at some point in the movie.

So when I first began teaching I treated them as if their close up was just about to occur.

But close up, I soon found out, with my particular level of student, is not always very pretty. Or coherent.  And it is anything but grammatically correct.

The system has not been very kind to my students.  Many of them can barely read.  Half of those have learning disabilities.  And probably only a quarter of THOSE have been properly diagnosed as such.

But they are here.  They are here for a reason.  Which is what I do tell them when they get down on themselves.  Which they do a lot, particularly in Public Speaking, where reality TV and Oprah and myspace and twitter and Facebook have all combined to make these kids feel they have to get all confessional all the time.  I do a funny and cheesy bit where I say "this is not the Oprah show, you don't have to tell us EVERYTHING"and they laugh but we still get very personal speeches about stuff you share when you are nineteen because you don't know any better.

Several weeks ago we had one such bare-all class.

It began with one student confessing his most embarrassing moment was when he led police on an eight-cruiser high speed chase dressed only in flip flops and his girlfriend's hooters shorts.  One of the arresting officers was alREADY his parole officer, so he was "in big trouble".

I was not surprised he shared that.

But I was surprised one of other students shared this:  that when she drinks she pees on herself.  She told a fabulous story about peeing in her friend's brand new tricked out Honda Civic.  It was very funny and shocking only because she seems more Long Island princess than on-the-corner-wino-to-be.

And I was even more surprised when two other students revealed in THEIR speeches that they too, pee on themselves when having had something to drink and one reassured all of "us ladies" that this was normal.  And acceptable.  And when asked, tell whoever has the audacity TO ask, that the pee is part of the pattern on your pants.  Your boyfriend should back you up.  If he does not, kick him out.

And I wanted to ask these ladies, is your mother around?  Could you maybe confide in her about this peeing thing and your pending admittance to rehab?

Because I can assure you you should not pee on yourself.

I assure you it does not look like any pattern on any pair of pants I have ever seen.

And if you can't read AND pee on yourself, there is just no hope.  No hope at all.  It is not alive, it has been killed by the steady stream of ammonia trickling down your leg.