Friday, Sept. 12, 2003
Meet the Teachers Night, posted at 1:45 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com It's Friday, and also the first payday of the new school year. It's only half a paycheck, but it will be nice to get a little bit of breathing room, even though everything in it is more than spent on necessities (car payment, rent) already.Last night was "Meet the Teachers" night, meaning I got to meet a lot of my new students' parents. I don't know my students well yet - have only seen them three times on this alternate day schedule - and that's sort of embarassing, but it was a good night overall. Although, I would have to concur with Charles, who corrected a new co-worker who had said that the next morning, she would have that weird feeling of never having left. Charles said she needed to replace "weird" with "shitty." And, yes, it did feel like I had never left when I got here in the morning.
An amusing thing happened last night. The mother of a "Glen," a student I had last year who I was pretty close with, came in to talk with me about the upcoming Outward Bound trip I'd like him to participate in. I'd never met her, but I'd talked to her so much that I had her number programmed into my cell phone. Well, she was much younger than I ever imagined, and rather attractice (Latina, cool little glasses). As we're talking, she's asking me about the program and everything, then, finally, she says, "Now, for the really important question. Are you married?"
I replied no, and come to find out, she wants to set me up with her friend. She wrote out her e-mail address and described her as beautiful and a teacher and athletic. She's 31, which is a little old for me, but it sounds promising. Other random similarities - wants to run a marathon, the kid of a retired cop - also came up. She lives in NYC, though, so I doubt there's much possibility, but I still found it very amusing. Glen, a kid who is pretty mature and you feel like you're talking to an adult when you talk to, was so embarassed that his mom was trying to set up his ex-English teacher. As she left, he hung behind, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Mr. Epiphany, she never acts this way. I'm so sorry." It was very amusing. I'm not sure if I'm going to do anything about it, but I told my boss that a former student's parent was trying to set me up with her friend and she said to take it as a high compliment.
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I am watching so much network TV these days. It's ridiculous. I found Whoopi to be somewhat mediocre, but I have some hopes for it because I like the star quite a bit and at least it's about something other than young singles in the city dating. It's sort of trying to be an All in the Family type of show, and it's far from that, but at least it's trying to be political in some way. It's not quite controversial enough, though, and there are too many weak jokes that the laugh track laughs way too hard at. But maybe it'll be okay. Although I'll probably never watch it once 24 comes on.