...Like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs

“I love seeing teachers outside of school. It’s like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs.”-Mean Girls, 2004

I was 13 years old when I sat in my hometown’s theater seeing Mean Girls for the first of what would become about 1000 times. It was like the 2000s teen girl’s bible. It hasn’t been THAT long since I was in school and, yeah, seeing your teacher at the grocery store shopping or out to dinner with their family was weird. It was so easy to forget that they had a life outside of 8:05 to 3:20 when school was in session. At the time, I was a seventh grader who wore too much makeup and spent all my time instant messaging friends and looking at clothes online. I never once thought I would assume the opposite role.

I was just a little younger then than my own students are now.

It’s happened three times now. Me, being a dog, walking on my hind legs. The first time, I was taking a casual Sunday afternoon stroll around my neighborhood, just minding my own business. One of my students was leaving basketball practice near my house right as I happened to be walking bythe sports complex. We had a pleasant and pretty awkward short conversation before going our separate ways. No big deal.

The second time, I was in a small town about an hour outside the city with a couple of friends. We were sitting up on a lookout point admiring a river and the bridge built across it when suddenly a girl in sunglasses knelt down about 8 inches from my face.

“Hola!” She pulled off her sunglasses, unsure if I recognized her. I did. A quiet girl who’s never exactly an eager volunteer in class, but never a problem either. She joined her family a few yards away for a mini photoshoot. Then a couple of minutes later she waved me over so her mom could take a picture of us in front of the bridge. A pretty strange coincidence to see her there, but still a positive interaction. Here we are:

But the most recent time? Now that’s the stuff nightmares are made of. It’s no accident that I live about an hour away from the school by public transportation, or thirtyish minutes by car. It can make for a rough commute, but outside of working hours, I have a huge safety net for maximum work-life balance. Once I leave the school, all responsibilities are out of sight and out of mind.

Each year, Medellin has the “Feria de las Flores,” a week-long flower festival. To kick-off the festival, there’s a big party a couple of minutes from my house. It was Friday, so yeah, I went. Music and dancing. Beer and Colombia’s own aguardiente, alcoholic licorice in a bottle.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. After the aguardiente started flowing, the Spanish soon started flowing much more easily as well. And since I was practicing speaking Spanish, it was educational. Basically the same thing as being at home studying. I was the only American in the group, which is pretty rare when going out. Spanish can make me uncomfortable because it means doing something I’m not particularly good at. So I like putting myself into situations where I don’t have a choice but to be forced to practice.

Everything was good. Everything was normal.

“Oh! Sheeeeeelby!” I heard from behind me. No. No. Nope.

I froze before turning halfway around and going white as a ghost.  I looked at the guy next to me. No.

“Oh my God, a group of my students,” I mumbled to him. It wasn’t just one or two of them either, more like six. I needed to remove the look of complete horror from my face.

“HEY GIRLS!” I forgot how to control the volume of my voice.

It was the overly fake greeting you give to someone you absolutely hate. They are actually a very sweet group of girls, I just hated that of all the millions of places they could be on this Earth, in that moment they had to be standing in front of me. They had just arrived, probably dropped off by their parents because none of them are old enough to drive.

I gave a couple of awkward hugs, trying not to breathe when I got too close, in an attempt to conceal the aguardiente on my breath. After some “how are you?” exchanges in Spanish, one of them took a brief scan of the circle of people in which I had been standing, all of whom happened to be Colombian.

“Helloooo!” she said to the group, ready to welcome everyone to her country.

“Umm…de Colombia,” was all I could manage to get out while shaking my head. She shrugged, already over it. We all stared at each other for a few very long seconds. They pointed toward the stage at the other side.

“Okay, bye Shelby!” They disappeared into the crowd. I turned back into my circle of people.

“My students are here. I’m at a party with my students. My 14-year-old students are here, at this party that I’m at. My life is actually over. Please pour me another drink.”