Tall Tales

As a teacher, I have often run into a situation where I have to hide a major portion of my life from my students, mainly that I'm gay. Can you picture how a class of adolescents would handle that situation? Exactly. In a perfect world, my sexuality would not be an issue but seeing that I'm living in a country that is still divided on the issue, I don't want to plunge into those murky waters just yet.

LIE: "I'm engaged to a muscular man named Riki who I met at Gamestop."
HOW IT STARTED: For about a month, Rachel and I had been texting and emailing each other before our first date at the Harrison House. Of course, I raved about the beautiful girl I had met and everyone at school (minus the students) knew that we were about to go on our first date. The day after our first date at the beginning of my last class, Matt, the teacher next to me, comes into class to ask me how my first date was. Of course the moment he left I had fifteen sets of eyes and ears on our conversation and every girl in the class wanted to know about my date. Obviously I'm not coming out of the closet to my class, so instead Riki was invented.

LIE: "I have a younger brother who's retarded."
HOW IT STARTED: Every year, I have a group of students who love to use the word "retarded." It doesn't matter how many times I tell them that I absolutely hate the word "retarded" they continue to use it. After warning my students on more than one occasion, I finally had enough and told them that I had a younger brother who is physically handicapped and I find it offensive when people of all ages use the word "retarded" because it's offensive to me. After telling the students about my imaginary younger brother, they miraculously never use the word "retarded" in front of me again.

LIE: "I'm allergic to alcohol."
HOW IT STARTED: Towards the end of college, I realized that my digestive system was having a serious problem with alcohol. It didn't matter how much I drank or what I drank, my stomach turned inside out within an hour of my first drink. After awhile, I got into the habit of telling people that I was allergic to alcohol.

LIE: "I have an ancestor who signed the Declaration of Independence."
HOW IT STARTED: I share the same last name as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. When my class read the Declaration of Independence, they noticed that I shared the same last name as one of the signatures. Of course they had to ask if we were related, so I told them yes. I also explained to them that I didn't like to make a big deal about it since my ancestor died a couple hundred years ago and I wanted to make a different name for myself.

LIE: "I'm Jewish."
HOW IT STARTED: Earlier this year, one of my students became obsessed with calling everyone a Nazi, not realizing the implications of this word. On one particular day, he decided to call me a Nazi. Instead of getting angry or offended, I looked at him and told him that I was offended because I was Jewish. He looked at me with curiosity, not understanding why this would offend me. I then went into a very detailed miniature lesson about the Nazis and all the people persecuted. Needless to say, he never called me or anyone else a Nazi.

LIE: "My grandfather liberated a concentration camp."
HOW IT STARTED: During my student teaching, I had a student ask me what the point of learning about the Holocaust was went it happened a century ago. I wanted to chuckle, but realized that this was a "teachable moment." I could have easily stated that my grandfather fought in the war, but his responsibility was pretty lame. Think about, what would be a more interesting story to relate history to kids, that my grandfather rode on a boat during World War II or that he was involved in a liberation? I'm going with the liberation.

LIE: "My brother is a gay construction worker."
HOW IT STARTED: This one originally evolved during practicum, but I recently used it against my students. A group of boys in fifth grade (I kid you not) were going on and on about gay men are disgusting because they put "their pee-pees in other mens poo-poo holes" and "act like girls". I kid you not, that was their exact words. How the hell do fifth graders know these things? I make it a rule NOT to discuss homosexuality with my students, but I did want the conversation to end. I very politely told them that my brother was a very masculine construction worker. They dropped the subject.