Already, it's happened

I am not sure what it is about me that allows for such a quick dissolvement of the teacher/student/discussion of clothes care barrier, but it happened Friday. Already. A girl looked at my somewhat wrinkled baseball jersey (it was our school color day for our first home football game) and asked, "Uh, Mr. EpiphanyinBaltimore, did you not have enough time to iron this morning?"

Then another chimed in, "I'm not sure if you can iron that material."

And then another: "Well, maybe he could have thrown it in the drier for a few minutes."

If only I had a drier, sweetie, if only I had a drier.

I didn't say that, though. As usual when confronted with such odd utterances from students, I just ignored it and said do your work. With maybe a little bit of a smirk.

Every year, there always seems to be discussions about my ironing or lack thereof. I try, I do, and even have taken to going to dry cleaners much of the time to make my shirts presentable, but sometimes they slip through the cracks.

Really great article in this week's City Paper, about Jonathan Kozol's new book on educational apartheid in school systems like Baltimore's. I'll be reading that one as soon as I can get my hands on it.