So I was hanging out with some rockstars last night. No really, I was. And many rockstar stereotypes were proven true over the course of the evening, all the good ones anyway….more on that in a bit, background first…
So one of my best buds, Drew, as many of you may know, works in the radio industry. He has this cool habit of meeting many famous people, and most of those people dig him. He’s definitely memorable. In fact, the first time I actually met him I already knew who he was, and he was even using a different name (Andy). Anyhow, we became good friends some 9 or 10 years ago and all is well. So Drew has become friends with a band called Royal Bliss out of Salt Lake City. There’s a story, not important, just know that they’re pretty good. Anyway, the band rolls through town to open for Buckcherry (you remember the “Crazy Bitch” song, right?) over at Pops. Sold out show, good times were had by all, but the night did not end after RB’s set, the party just moved around the corner and down the street a bit…
My mother is a retired teacher. Throughout her years as a teacher, she had seen brothers and sisters come through her classrooms and after many years even children of her former students (and even her own children as it turned out). One of the things she didn’t really like to do too much was go out too often in the area where she was a teacher. It wasn’t too difficult most of the time cause we lived a little ways away from where she taught so generally, it was no big deal. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her students, it was just she liked to separate school time from family time, and I can’t say that I can fault her for that.
So I used to teach middle school and do a bit of home-schooling on the side for some extra dough. And yes, several years after having my mother as a teacher, we worked together in the same school. At the time, I was rather young and didn’t mind throwing back a few cold frosties, and usually a few more after that. Twice during my two and a half years, I ran into one of my students. The first time, I was down at a little place called Goose Creek (which is always a great hoosier experience, not to mention tons of fun!) which is a big lake with a lot of property around it. Everyone had 4-wheelers and golf carts down there and it was mostly a big party. Well, one night while trucking around on a golfcart (highly intoxicated, but not driving), my buddy (the driver) stopped to talk to a few people, when I hear behind me, “Hey, mis-ter Mor-gan!”. She spoke like that too, which meant she was probably high, but anyway, a conversation ensued about me being drunk and she shouldn’t drink, and I’m old enough, and she’s not, and no, I’m not gonna give you a beer or a cigarette, etc. It was weird, but whatever.
The second time, I was again, well over an hour away from where I taught, camping with a some friends (as camping as you can be in an RV). One afternoon, drunk, I stopped at the little bait area to buy some worms for some fishing. When these two young girls in their swimsuits come up behind me and do the whole “guess who” thing. I had no clue at all given the setting and the circumstances, but it was two girls from one of my classes. Turns out, they were “camping” as well with their much older boyfriends, so they didn’t need any beer, but might come by to party with us later (14 year olds are different these days…). Yeah, whatever, don’t bother…
So after the show, the band heads over to one of the “establishments” on the East side. For those of you not from St. Louis, there is a rather high density of Gentleman’s clubs in the East St. Louis area (just over the Mississippi on the Illinois side). The first odd story comes while Drew, the lead singer, and I were sitting at a table with one of the dancers. The singer guy was telling me about Salt Lake City when he mentioned that he was originally from Imperial, which is a little south of St. Louis, and my old stomping grounds. The dancer says her family (grandparents) had a farm in Imperial. Turns out the singer guy’s family also had a farm and it was right next door to the dancer’s family’s farm. The real kick in the junk was that those two families were related. So the lead singer is talking to this stripper that had been sitting with Drew and I and it turns out that they’re cousins somewhere down the line…
So then a girl walks by, one of the waitresses. Now all the little waitress girls are probably between the ages of 18 and 21 and they wear these little cheerleader outfit things (not sure what you call a cheerleader outfit). The girl looked vaguely familiar. I tell Drew this much, then I decided it can’t be true. But then damn, she looks familiar, but there’s no way, right? Finally, she asks if I need a beer and when she comes back I ask her what her name is.
Sure enough.
I tell her, “this is a bit awkward,” as I’m paying her for the beer. She kinda looks at me quizzically and says “Oh my god!” We kinda laugh a bit and I go back to my seat. She comes back around a bit later and I ask her if she remembers, she says “Of course, I do.” Turns out, she was one of my home-schooled students. I’d drive to her house everyday after school and we’d do homework and I’d go over the new material from her classes and just talk about things (not those things Drew, you asshole, she didn’t always get along well with others so we’d talk about that kind of stuff). Anyway, the cool thing was, on the last day of school, she and her mom came to my classroom and brought me a case of Busch beer hidden in the bottom of a giant giftbag. Sorry, Lisa, I’ll admit I had beer in the school for about 5 minutes until I could get it out to my car on the last day of school, but it wasn’t my fault.
So yes, this weekend was my first “awkward/former teacher/am I really old enough to have known somebody as a 14 year old that now works in a strip club (as a waitress)” moment. It was odd at first, no big deal by the end of the evening, but now, mom, I completely understand why we went shopping and dining elsewhere…
Ry