The Scent of Weird...

...has been wafting around me at school lately.

First, about once a week over the last month or so, I've been getting a visit from a senior, whom I've never taught before (though I've taught his sister), intent on relating his firm belief that Jesus was just a good man, and that Christianity is a fraud first perpetrated on us for political reasons by Constantine. Why me? I have no idea, since I don't talk about Christianity at school unless it is in the context of reading something like Genesis, or The Divine Comedy. I might make the occasional mention of my church, but never when he's been around. Yet there he is lurking at my door at some point each week, apparently dying to get past the small talk and... what, evangelize me? I know I'm (over?)prone to putting real people and incidents in the context of Flannery O'Connor's fiction, but I swear this kid couldn't do a better Hazel Motes imitation to save his life (get the Flan pun there?). Next thing you know he'll be telling me he has started "The Church Without Christ."

And then there is my former principal's wife. She is retired from whatever it was she used to do, and so has been a substitute teacher in the county for the last couple of years. Just before Christmas, she stopped me in the hall and told me just how disappointed and upset she was that her husband wasn't featured enough in last year's yearbook: "He was only in two pictures! Where was the page all about the administrators? We thought everyone loved "us" here last year, and yet he's barely mentioned?" On and on she went, while I shifted nervously, and then she ran off to her class duty as the bell rang. Since that time, she apparently never fails to mention to any class she subs for how upset she is about the lack of coverage for her husband, and how she doesn't think she can support our book by buying one this year (she didn't buy one last year, anyway, btw), and shouldn't yearbooks have big features about the principal?, etc.

My solace is that everyone thinks she is crazy, and that she is being unprofessional, and just a wee bit paranoid. And since she's from NYC, you can imagine what her craziness gets attributed to, and what epithet gets attached to her. Fortunately, while I'm not above exposing her in my blog, I would never refer to her with the "Y" word. Well, rarely, at least.