Teachers Drink

We do, we drink. Special Ed teachers drink most heavily, their doctors write prescriptions for it. But all teachers drink and this surprises a lot of people. People who have never taught, anyway. I didn't know this until I student-taught and felt somewhat perverse as I headed out with the teachers to the bar across the street for this lesson. The men spoke of girls who's shirts were too low and skirts too high. The women wanted to know the teacher related gossip from where I attended high school. I thought to myself back then, "I cannot wait to get to the clubs this weekend so I can drink and dance away the memory of these teachers drinking their week away."

We drink most, I've found, after parent teacher - conferences and the last day before Winter Break. At my first job I drank most frequently with the young teachers, like myself, and out of assorted glasses we took from the cupboards of our funky low-rent apartments. We gathered together two or three times a week to impress each other with the way we imitated our students and with how much we could drink and still look perky the next day.

At my next job, where I still teach, I met another group of young teachers to go out and drink with. We didn't get together as often, only on Fridays, and it was usually at the same smoke-filled, narrow and dark neighborhood bar. We payed the jukebox to play the same songs and eventually a few of us would be drunk enough to leave the pool table and dance. A lot of those teachers smoked, so to fit in, I began smoking also. I dated a guy that smoked and one day after hacking up some really thick uncomfortable phlegm I asked him, "do you think I'm coughing so much because I'm smoking now?" He wrinkled his brow and looked at me like I was the idiot art teacher I am and shook his head, "no." The question didn't even deserve an audible reply. I chose to believe him for a little while; he was an English teacher and had a really impressive vocabulary so he had to be smart. This new group of teachers were fun but not as much fun as the group from my first job. These teachers liked to impress each other with stories of how wonderful they all were at teaching.

After marrying and quitting smoking I'd attend only the Winter Break party and if I wanted to drink with teachers, I'd invite a couple to my house. I thought I'd outgrown attending bars and drinking with fellow teachers until last week when a couple invited me to join them on St. Patty's Day. It was a Monday, I thought, "if anything can bring me back to my first years of teaching, drinking on a Monday night will." So I went.

I was NOT disappointed. We weren't there to stroke each other and tell one another what great educators we were. Instead, there were funny stories of students finding dried slices of ham hidden between the pages of Science textbooks, falling down the steps to get parents to give you a Popsicle, dogs peeing in the bed, and the principal turning on his pocket flashlight in the darkroom so that he could see. Ah, new stories from a fresh new group of young teachers. These kids were funny! I became the "wise experienced one." I tried to explain divorce in a marriage that had not lost it's love to a kid who'd been recently dumped. I remember being in his shoes at just about the same age, seeking answers from the older teachers whose opinion I valued. I hope I had something wise to tell him, but I don't think he'd remember it. He had three beers for every one that I had.

Before paying for a coffee this morning, I opened my wallet to find the little paper model of Matt that Juan made to recreate the act of falling down the stairs for a Popsicle.