The Lines that We'll Draw Begin and Don't Stop

I'm living in the land of nostalgia. Where everyone surrounding me is from this place, where fellow teachers swoon at the magic of Homecoming and memories of dancing in the gym with their sweetheart. And my students are half my age, and I can remember only a handful of my own teachers' names, with vague notions of what happened on prom night, graduation night. Fleeting images of notes exchanged in halls, quotes written on desks, drives in cars, looking at the stars through someone's moon roof. Certainly not conversations and barely even the boys I kissed, whether I kissed them at all. I am far enough removed that I can't even guess which students I would have been friends with.

Last night, the Homecoming game. 20 minutes late, the sun setting, I park in a field next to other cars off a neighborhood street snaking around a lake, the towering trees and breeze moving through Spanish moss. In line along the khaki-painted concrete, women with large earrings, blonde-highlighted hair, twinsets, wedges, tan skins, exclamations again and again when they run into their old crew. Families carrying those vinyl stadium seat cushions in orange and black. Students selling Mardi Gras beads to benefit the science club. I'm surprised by how quiet it all is, the difference between this little field and the crowds of 100,000 at the only football games I've been to in the last 14 years. My Dixie-flag student high fives me when I walk by. You finally made it! The photo student who asked me to come to the game to see her on the Homecoming Court yells my name from the stands and says You came!!! It is strange being in this place and realizing how much it means to them. But it means something to me too. Third quarter and I help pass out flavored waters to the band--my students apparently half of them.

Even here on this brisk night, I am thinking of Hunter, the kid I unwittingly got suspended hours earlier for refusing to give up his cell phone to me when I caught him texting in class. When he came back from the office with the slip, I tried not to show how upset I was. And still, despite his frustration, he volunteered to read aloud. But after class, I asked him to stay and I told him that I wanted him here. That it was important to me that he be in class, but that it was difficult when he gets so distracted. And he said, I know, but it's hard. I want to be here too. And he seemed to mean it. He was texting his boss, and he has a job--of course he has a job--and it's likely not just any high school job, but a job to help out his family. Because that's the reality of this place.

I sit on the bleachers with one of my freshmen honors students, the most earnest girl, and I joke with her about the hoodie she's wearing, since earlier in the day we talked about the origin of hoodies and why we can't wear them in school, and who is privileged to get to wear hoodies without recourse in our society. And she says, I love that sometimes English is like debate, that we have these discussions about lots of different social things. And I show her on my phone the photo I took of her desk, the quote she had written in pencil, which she was sad to discover had been erased that morning. And she is so excited to see I took a picture of it, that it's on my instagram,  that I have an instagram: That's so cool! And we chat a little longer and I realize that she's come to the game alone, something I could never have done when I was 14, and I tell her so, that I wasn't that brave.

On my way down the bleachers, I see one of my photo students, and I check in on him. He's brought one of the school cameras to the game and I see the photos he's taken of his friend, the student on Homecoming Court. And he got The Shot. The moment of pure anticipation right before they announced Homecoming Queen. And she is beautiful but the moment is hard. Because she didn't get it. But he was there and he recorded it, and her reunion afterward with a graduated friend she wasn't expecting to see. Their embrace, their glee.

And I am so proud. And so tired. And so damn lucky to be here.