Shattering the illusions of children

So camp has started.

A student of mine from last year, a very good student who apparently really enjoyed my class, is working at camp this summer. He works in the kitchen for my great friend Mark.

Mark and I have a kind of, okay agressively, flirty relationship. He's 50 and not at his best health and I am 30 and very active healthy, so it's all talk. It has become a staple of camp entertainment to listen to Mark and I go at it. The first one to blush looses... (No matter what you are imagining, I promise it's worse...) Yes, I usually win...

The kinds of things I say at camp in those situations are nothing a student would have ever heard me (or hopefully any other teacher) say at school. It's kind of freeing to be brazen like that at camp. It's safe, because they all know me, love me, accept me and know I am not in any way serious. See here's the thing...

I don't believe in sex outside of marriage, experiminting with drugs, being drunk, hurting people or lying. Or more correctly I believe they exisit, I simply try hard to live my life without those issues. I have always lived my life that way, always...

So, for me to be wanton and brazen and flirty like that at camp is really funny and I get to be completely outrageous.

The point is, this kid had been my student a bit over a year ago. When he got to camp, Mark told his entire staff, "what happens in camp, stays in camp." but he pulled this kid aside and especially explained to him that this was my safe place and most people wouldn't understand that and that he should keep anything he learns about me or sees to himself for the sake of my privacy as a teacher back at school. The kid seemed fine with that. He is actually still fine with that...

It's just that since then, Mark has delighted in dredging up stories of a couple of my really outrageous moments, just to watch this kid's eyes pop. It is rather funny, but I almost feel kind of bad about it. The funniest part was after Mark goes on and on a bit, another kid says (getting into the game and all)

"We know you just love Sandy for her pot." (I have a antique, cast iron, dutch oven that I have promised to give to Mark someday. He truly covets it...)

This poor kid went white as a sheet, turned his face to me in pure terror,

"YOU SMOKE POT TOO!?!?!?!?!?!"

We laughed for some time (after making sure he understood the statement for what it really meant.)

Several of the other staff have come to tell me that this kid was bragging about how he really knew me and he had been my student and I was his favorite teacher and they told him that unless he worked up here with me he didn't know me at all and poor boy, now they've convinced him.

It was terribly funny to see, though.