Stephanie and Somebody

At the private Christian high school where I teach, one of the recurring jokes is how I get mistaken for a student on a weekly basis. At the first all school assembly I made a joke out of it and told the students that I am not a freshman.

One day later was a huge field day full of activities, and every student received a t-shirt with a color corresponding to their class. Since I teach freshman English, I was given the freshman color shirt. That day in chapel, I made a joke out of it again, saying that apparently I was a freshman and didn't know it.

Later in the day we had a huge "Gunk War," in which the teachers gather in the middle to protect the Dean of Students from vengeance surging on teenage hormones. The students are armed with a large bucket of beet pulp mixed with water that they can hurl at the teachers, but the teachers get shaving cream (a big shock to the first few kids who step forward in an assassination attempt). Very quickly the event becomes a free-for-all, with kids stealing cans of shaving cream and teachers stealing buckets of beet pulp.

Half of the kids love the event, and half run for the hills. About halfway through the war, I took a can of shaving cream and made my way through the crowd of onlookers. I was completely covered from head to toe in gunk as I went around splattering kids.

One senior girl had her back to me while she was talking to a group of junior guys. As I walked past her, I smeared some shaving cream on her face from behind. She wheeled around and looked me up and down with great disgust. "Who the hell are you?"

I remember in John 18 that Jesus tells the mob who he is and they fall to the ground, but I had never experienced anything like it. "I am a teacher" seems to have a similar effect.