Salt n Pepa’s classic “Push It” came on the radio yesterday and as I instinctively turned it up I was immediately reminded of a music teacher I had in 8th grade while attending a Catholic school in Florida. A classmate inquired once what his current favorite song was – not an odd question to pose to a music teacher but his reply stuck with me all these years. Let me just contextualize this, this teacher was probably late 30’s at the time, kind of overweight and balding. He wore a lot of polo shirts and sandals. He responded that musically his favorite song was Rob Base’s then super hit “It Takes Two” because he really enjoyed the beat, but lyrically he didn’t like it at all though this was largely due to the fact that as a Catholic he didn’t believe in premarital sex and as he wasn’t married and still a virgin, he didn’t have a personal connection to what was being discussed in the song and didn’t think it was really the right message to be sending out to people, especially younger people who listen to the radio. I’ve often thought of him and wondered how that turned out for him.
Conversely the math teacher I had at that time in the same school would often blow off the entire days lesson to tell us stories about getting drunk, high and partying with her husband and “their friends” which on more than one occasion led to a morning with several naked people waking up in bed together.
And the same year I had a nun who taught history throw a book across the room and hit me square in the face. This was after I’d caused a bit of a fuss in the school by refusing to sign a document saying I wouldn’t talk to anyone who I knew was using drugs or alcohol, which caused the school to fall just short of their 100% Drug Free Zone classification or something like that. The rest of my class was a bunch of liars.
I learned a lot about the world in 8th grade, though probably not what was on the curriculum.