I Love the 80s F.O.B. Edition Part 5

     I lived within walking distance of my elementary school(shout out to J.Y. Joyner).  My dad would give me a ride if it was raining heavily.  During second grade, there was a particularly heavy rain morning.  My dad tied plastic bags over my sneakers to keep them dry and drove me to school.  When I got there I noticed it being awfully quiet...and deserted, outside and inside(had the zombie apocalypse started?).  When I got to my room, it was empty except for my teacher.  She told me school had been cancelled because of flooding roads.  The school buses couldn't get to all the stops.  The day had been turned into an optional teacher workday.  Well, my dad had already left wouldn't be able to come back and pick me up.  She was nice enough to let me stay.  She brought me a morning snack from the cafeteria and explained to me what our class would have studied that day.    I got a head start on what would be the next day's school work and completed some of it.  I saw her light up a cigarette.  She told me not to tell the class she smoked.  Keeping me from being bored, she let me help her grade some papers and staple together handouts.  Then she took me to the library.  One of my classmates was there.  She was the daughter of one the teachers.  It was around lunch time that she decided to drive me home, but not before taking me to McDonald's for a Happy Meal.  I never saw her in the same light after that day.  She would be my favorite teacher until middle school.  Thinking about her now, she was cute.  She probably only had been teaching a few years(in her mid 20s).  The next year while waiting in the lunch line with my third grade class, I saw her walking in with her second grade class.  We waved and smiled at each other.  She was quite pregnant. 


     When I told my parents what had happened at school, they were very surprised.  School cancelled because of rain?!  It was such a foreign concept to them.  My teacher advised me to listen to the radio on mornings of bad weather for school delays and cancellations.  Luck would have it, that winter, I got to experience my first snow day :)


     What made me think of the story above was last night.  The Foreign Exchange held a free private concert for about 30 of their fans.  I'm calling it "Unplugged" show.  The way you got to go was RSVPing to an email address and getting picked at random.  I didn't get picked, so I jokingly bitched about it on Facebook and Twitter.  Next thing I know, Phonte is messaging me.  I worked out a deal with the woman of a thousand hustles, Aimee Flint.  I could come to the show if I helped set up, greet the guests, and sale merch.  So here I was, 24 years later, feeling like a kid on that rainy day again.  I got see the men and women behind the artists, like I got to see the woman behind the teacher that day.  

to be continued...