Let’s Watch The Lion King… Again. Oh Wait, How About Selena?

I have gone to the same Church for almost ten years. I spent two years in a plaid skirt, white button down, and NO FLIP-FLOPS attending the school. I was a Catholic school girl, only without the attached sluttiness.

(Good Catholic school girl and Naughty Catholic school girl.)

That was back in 5th and 6th grade so I guess you can’t really expect me to be breaking out the Britney-esque outfits. And I don’t think my hair could curl like that.

Anyway, after my Catholic school girl days, I went to a very… interesting school. It was pretty ghetto. Our hallways were filled with gang symbols. Did you know there’s a gang that isn’t allowed to eat donuts because one of their leaders was shot in a Krispy Kreme? And that one gang’s symbol is a trident? Except they kind of suck at art and it looks like a very large fork. It’s not very intimidating unless it’s supposed to mean they want to eat you for dinner. But I bet we’d all taste pretty bad unless there was tons of seasoning involved. But ew, who wants to be a cannibal?

Man, I need to stop Googling the stuff I talk about because I just found out that as of February 9, 2009, there’s a group of people in Brazil wanted for eating a family member. And you can get Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy from eating people. How long till that shows up on House?

Anyway, back to being a school girl. I went to the big scary ghetto school because I was accepted in to the International Baccalaureate Program. One thing I learned from the International Baccalaureate Program is how to spell “Baccalaureate” without looking it up. I’ve got mad skillz. Being in IB meant that all the kids were supposed to be intelligent, nice, and generally model students. Because my crazy ghetto school really thought that we’d be nice, or because they got a kick out if it, they put our classrooms on the same hall as the Special-Ed kids. We were supposed to be the good kids. We usually were, except in Spanish class.

Our Spanish teacher had issues. What were they?

She was:

• a smoker who had to leave the classroom at least twice during a 90 minute period to smoke
• considerably overweight
• delusional regarding her appearance
• very relaxed about her bathing habits
• often playing with her stringy greasy hair
• very fond of low-cut shirts
• in the process of getting divorced and had a young daughter with asthma as a result of her mother’s smoking
• in to handing out lunch detention, which meant that the detainee would not be allowed to go outside to recess and had to sit at the lame table with all the teachers
• obsessed with movies and having the class watch them… in English
• upset that she wasn’t Selena
• likely to assign random work that had nothing to do with learning Spanish, ie creating scrapbooks

When I was in 8th grade, she decided we should stop watching the Lion King and move on to more appropriate films, namely West Side Story. This was good news. We had gotten really tired of Simba.

After we watched West Side Story about five times, she decided we really really needed to know all the words to the songs. And how to dance to them.

Since it was the last week of school, she took us outside to the recess area. She lined us in pairs, staring at each other from across the cement. Giving us sheets of music, she made us sing the songs. And dance. Have you ever seen 8th graders dance? It’s not pretty.

There were only twelve kids in my class, three of which were girls. The rest were boys. When she decided we had to waltz, six boys had to dance together. They attempted to rebel by running away. It didn’t work but it was a good way to kill time.

Once she realized that the chances of us dancing and singing were slim to none, she escorted us back inside to the classroom. With a deep sigh, she walked out, presumably for a smoke break.

We didn’t care. It was better without her anyway. We didn’t have to worry about her leaning forward in her low-cut blouse and seeing her ample bosom spilling out. It was gross. With her gone, we could raid the candy jar.

Monkey, one of the guys in my class, stood up and ran over to her cabinets. The huge jar was on top, halfway filed with candy. We were rarely given a piece while she’d spend most of class munching on them and slurping from her gigantic gas station cup of Coke. Or we at least hoped it was only Coke.

Monkey pulled the jar down and unscrewed the lid. In the spirit of rebellion, he started throwing the candy around the room to us. We each got about five pieces. By the time he had given out the candy, our lookout shouted that she was on the way back. Within minutes we were back to our desks, grinning at each other but silent.

She walked in and stared at us.

“Are you ready for the exam?” She said before coughing. She didn’t bother to cover her mouth.

We nodded. We had taken about three tests that year. Two had been on the Lion King. One was vocabulary and she had written the words and definitions on the board right before. Then she had attempted to erase them. Except she only erased lightly so we could see the answers. She liked giving us good grades because it made her seem like a good teacher. However, she’d give you a bad grade if she didn’t like you.

The next day, we showed up for the exam. There were five words written on the board. She wasn’t there. We waited, expecting at least a substitute to walk in. No one did.

About an hour in to the class, the principal walked by. He was visiting random rooms to see how exams were going. When he noticed that our class was alone, he freaked out.

“Where is she?” He demanded.

We all shrugged.

“Where’s your exam?”

“On the board,” I said. Monkey pointed at it.

“Five words?!?”

“Yes sir.”

He sighed. “Fine. Define them and you can go to recess until your next class.”

The words were hola, uno, bueno, chico, and mujer.

We all got As.

Today at Easter Mass I saw our Spanish teacher for the first time in six years. She was with her kid, who was coughing up a storm. Her shirt was low-cut, her waist still ample. Nothing seemed to have changed.

And then, as she was walking down the aisle to leave I noticed something different.

She washed her hair.