Fun Conversations with Co-Workers – Ongoing

Equal Time Edition

We have a slightly angry and overdramatic student.

Rose* sits with her hoodie up over her head, hair in her face, and she refuses to look at us. Says she only looks people in the eye once she trusts them. Fantastic. She wears a Marilyn Manson t-shirt and plays with her tongue ring while I’m trying to get her pumped about Reconstruction and what an asshole President Johnson was.

Fun stuff.

Luckily, Rose has teachers who help thaw out the nonsense with patience and kindness. In other words, I fight the urge to tell her 1) Marilyn Manson is a boring and regurgitated Alice Cooper/Bowie clone; 2) that tongue-ring makes me wanna hurl; 3) sit up straight; 4) “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”; and 5) her Ally Sheedy-routine is so twenty years ago.


Instead, I try light-hearted sarcasm. Almost always works.

“If a fire breaks out and I save your life,” I said, “then you’d probably trust me. However, short of a near-tragedy that requires great heroism sure to get me featured on Lifetime’s Movie of the Week, how does one earn trust in a simple school setting?”

Rose shrugged her shoulders.

“Or maybe I just fail you when I say I'm going to fail you,” I said. “That'd make me trustworthy, right? And what about you? How are you going to earn my trust? Maybe if we get to Spring Break and you *don’t* kill me?”

A flicker of a smile.

It’s a start.

Then Co-Worker #2 stuck his head in my classroom.

“If there’s any teacher here that deserves your trust, Rose, it’s Ms. Robinson.”

I blinked several times and wondered, if this was a dream, why didn’t Co-Worker #2 look like Owen Wilson?

“Ms. Robinson,” he continued, “is out there every day, fighting the good fight, rooting for the underdog, while the rest of us lazy bums watch television. I’ve never met a person who has such good intentions at heart.”

Co-Worker #1 stuck his head in the classroom as well, because, like the Lord, he hears everything.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, skeptical and annoyed.

“It’s true,” Co-Worker #2 continued. “Catherine works hard to make the world a better place and ought to be commended. I’d trust her with my life.”

(long pause while we wait for the punchline)

“Wow,” I finally said to him. “Write this date down. The date I actually started to like you.”

And so it is. Not all evangelical conservatives in Colorado Springs suck.

Who knew?