Back in the day
I could sit in the cafeteria with the kids
or in the teacher's lunch room
with the other teachers
or I'd eat in my own classroom
with some of my favorite students --
those who didn't quite fit in,
as I didn't quite fit in.
In the teacher's lunch room
I'd listen to my colleagues
debate which kid would end up pregnant next
bewail teenaged baby mama wars
grieve for the latest student death
--accidental, suicidal, murder, war-related, AIDS-related--
sigh that a teen's grandmother was only forty
shake their heads over smelly teenagers.
In the cafeteria
I'd be waylaid by the latest gossip
spoken by kids
about teachers
about each other
about adults in the neighborhood.
Being in the cafeteria kept me in the loop.
But eating in my room with my faves --
Now those were interesting times.
Once as I sat playing on the internet
school cafeteria lunch to the left of my computer
one of the girls whose future the teachers had been debating
(she was always having passionate explosive arguments
in the hallways with her boyfriend)
sat beside me
and pulled up her blouse and bra to show me her breast.
"Miss," she asked, "Are my breasts too small?"
I calmly put my sandwich down.
(I was always infinitely calm in school)
"They're okay, I think. And pull down your shirt.
If anyone comes in, I could get falsely arrested
for pedophilia. Who says they're too small?"
She put down her shirt, "My boyfriend."
"Ah," I said and returned to my sandwich.
I thought of saying, "Don't get pregnant, okay.
The teachers have you in their pregnancy pool."
I didn't though.
I just went back to my sandwich.
She never got pregnant, by the way.
And when she dropped by to visit my husband and me,
she told me she had ditched her stupid boyfriend
and had joined the army.
A surprise that.
I'd never been into wars.
All my students knew that.
Heck, they knew all the philosophies
religious issues
emotional issues
of their teachers.
But I was happy she had turned out well.
Teachers always love when their students
turn out well.
