Teacher’s Pet

There is a moment of sheer panic when you meet one of your child’s new teachers and he smiles at you, says he’s quite impressed with what your daughter told the class you did for an occupation. Then time freezes.

“She told us you wrote books. I’d love to read a couple of them.”

Thinking on my feet, my first instinct was to say, “I don’t think you’d be interested.” Then thought, no, that would be cutting my own throat. Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered but this was a teacher. How do you tell him you don’t want to share your smutty, dirty, nasty side with him?

Instead, I sucked it up and told him I would email him a list of links. He looked at me, puzzled but placated. After sending the list, I went on about my business. Back to school night we ran into him again. He thanked me, cleared his throat, stated they were interesting and he enjoyed them. Funny thing, this time around, it was he that adopted the embarrassed appearance.

We never spoke of it again. Now, I’m sitting here left wondering if my next work will be along the lines of “a professor and his naughty co-ed.” Wonder if he still uses a paddle?

S.D.