It’s A Small World After All

There was always something vaguely familiar about my son’s kindergarten teacher. The way she moved her hands. Her voice. Something that I just couldn’t put my finger on. There was just a strange sense of familiarity, something that I didn’t constantly think about or dwell upon. It just…was there.

Yesterday. At Parent-Teacher Conferences.

I was sitting in the conference room with my son’s teacher. She was explaining to me the areas of his deficits and of his strengths. She told me how wonderful and sweet he is. She mentioned how she is so crazy about him. Well, duh. He IS my son. He is awesome.

She told me a story about how, during some testing for conferences, she asked my son to tell her words that begin with certain letters. There were around 5 or 6 letters, one of which was the letter “s”. When she got to that letter, he wanted to use a word that he’d “get in trouble for and isn’t allowed to say”.

Shit.

She got him to think of another “s” word. Thankfully. (It was snake, thank you very much)

Through this story she was telling me, she let me know that she had taught at a local private school known for its quirky kids for many years, so she was used to this type of response. It happened to be the same place where I used to go to summer camp from grades 1-6. It was the most awesome 6 summers. Those private schools certainly know how to put together a GREAT summer day camp program.

Turns out that she had gone to the same camp when she was young. Not only that but she had been a counselor there. Around the same time that I was a camper.

Through the rest of the conference, I kept thinking to myself that I had to ask what her last name was when she was a counselor there. To the point that I could hardly concentrate on the conference anymore. After all, it was already established that my son needs extra help to catch him up from the previous couple of years in preschool. It seems, he checked-out during learning time and is completely behind the rest of his class…

ANYWAY…

Finally. I asked. I had to. I was driving myself insane. It turned out that there was a reason for why I felt that she seemed so familiar.

My son’s kindergarten teacher was my camp counselor when I was around 7 or 8.

I remembered her last name because, when I was young it had cracked me up. And I remember talking to her about it and she made some jokes that, at 7 or 8 were hysterical.

I never really thought about her again after that summer. I was young. She was a counselor. And she wasn’t a cute boy.

Now, 30-something years later, she is my son’s teacher. And she has a different, very un-funny, last name. Lucky for her. Otherwise, she’d have to go into a whole one woman show, poking fun at and explaining her last name to, my son. Because sadly, or fortunately, his mind works very similarly to mine.

Anyway, my son thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world. It gives him bragging rights, like he needed any more of them.

It’s kind of cool, the whole thing. And it goes to show you how small a world this really is and the whole 6 degree thing.

It’s probably a good thing she had me as a camper when I was a little girl. And she doesn’t remember.

Yeah. It’s definitely, probably a good thing.

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