Today I rounded the corner of my office, where I tutor kids for math, and discovered two sixth-graders, drawing the most intricately pornographic image I’d ever seen on my whiteboard. I stood in the doorway and cleared my throat.
They turned around and looked surprised.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
The kid with the marker in his hand went from surprised to confused.
“Don’t stand there looking so innocent,” I said. “You don’t think I know what that is?”
“I was just showing him where I’m going for spring break,” he said.
“Oh, really? I don’t know where your parents take you on vacation, but I want it off my whiteboard. I have a bunch of first-graders coming in here any minute now. What do you think your parents say about this?”
“But they’re the ones who showed me how to draw it,” he insisted.
As of this time tomorrow, the boy and his family will be looking at palm trees, while I stare baffled at a map of the United States, wondering how I never noticed how phallic our Sunshine State really is.
When it comes right down to it, you can take the teacher out of Hartford, but you can’t take the Hartford out of the teacher.