Forget You and Forget Him Too

I was at the grocery store one day when I heard a man saying, “Hey.  Hey!  Do I know you?”  I turned and saw the father of a student I had this year.  I said, “Yes.  You know me.  I was ________’s teacher this year.”  Small talk followed.  During the year there had been meetings, phone calls, notes, field trips and all manner of interactions, but within a month of graduation, he had forgotten me. 

He’s not the first parent to forget me.  Another woman, who I emailed weekly, called frequently, and to whose husband my class sent care packages while he was stationed overseas, saw me in the gym and asked if she had met me at the local newspaper’s job fair. I had to remind her that I had been her son's teacher.

I was at the used book store one afternoon and, as I was walking to my car, a woman drove by and I thought, “That looks like _______’s mom.”  And it was.  We held up traffic for a few minutes as we swapped stories and I heard about all the wonderful things her boys are doing.  We talked about Ireland, too.  Her boys left my classroom four and eight years ago, but she knew exactly who I was and that I have a thing for Ireland.

It’s a funny thing.  Every year there are good relationships with students and parents.  Every year there are bad relationships, too.  I always worry about seeing the people who didn’t like me out in public, but more often than not, they don’t remember me.  I wish I could forget them as easily as they forget me.  I wish being thankful for the good ones would come as easily to me as worrying over the rough ones.

I Break the Yolks and Make a Smiley Face

I remember hearing on the news that the town where I live has the distinction of buying the most fast food breakfasts of any city in the U.S.  I don’t think I contribute too much to that statistic, except that for the past year, I’ve met with my small group girls every Sunday morning at McDonald’s.  The McDonald’s Southern chicken biscuit was my favorite meal for a while, but calorie counting made it necessary for me to explore another option.  The Egg McMuffin.

Ah, the Egg McMuffin.  Canadian bacon, not obnoxious ham.  A delightful slice of cheese.  A buttery English muffin.  A protein-packed egg.  And 300 calories.  Rapture!

Since I love the Egg McMuffin and since I have more time in the summer for things like making breakfast (and blogging), I have perfected my at-home Egg McMuffin.  And since I also enjoy a good food blog, I will here attempt to tell you about my at-home Egg McMuffin.

First, I begin with Taylor Pork Roll.  Taylor Pork Roll is from Trenton, NJ.  This is what I know about Trenton, NJ.  It’s where you change trains when going from Philadelphia to New York City.  It’s where I once saw Jars of Clay and Caedmon’s Call and my friend Josh caught Matt Odmark’s pick, after feeling around on the arena floor and picking up a gummi bear by mistake.  Trenton is the capital of New Jersey.  And they make pork roll and they ship it to my grocery store and if they ever stop, I will stand and cry in the refrigerated meats section.  Earlier this year I learned that if you cut the pork roll it won’t get all convex on you while you’re cooking it.

While the pork roll is cooking on the stove, I scramble my egg and toast my English muffin.  The “secret” to my scrambled eggs is a touch of milk.  I started doing this because in college my friend’s mom gave me a cookbook called “The Starving Student’s Cookbook” and I actually had to look in it for a recipe for scrambled eggs.  So that’s how I’ve been scrambling eggs since 1997.  

I play it pretty fast and loose with English muffins.  They’re kind of expensive and sometimes it’s cheaper to get those little sandwich thins that only have 100 calories.  This week I am using the nice, refrigerated English muffins.  They’re cheaper than the non-refrigerated ones and they have sunflower seeds in them.  Winning.

Usually the muffin is toasted about when the pork roll is heated, so I let them get acquainted on a plate while I put the egg into the frying pan and let it cook in the pork roll grease.  When the egg is done, I assemble my sandwich, give the frying pan a soak and enjoy!

The at-home Egg McMuffin made this way has 275 calories.  When I go back to work I won’t have time to prepare them in the morning, but not to worry—they make a fine dinner too.

I'm Twenty-Two for a Moment

I was with some people at church recently, just a few of us.  Within the group there was a girl I hadn’t met before.  I introduced myself and asked if she attended our church and the answer came, “No, I’m just hangin’ out with him” and a gesture to a guy I already know.

As the evening went on, there would be times when I would catch her shooting him a sneaky smirk or a sly smile and it got me a little emotional.  Watching their interaction made me happy and sad all at the same time. 

I guess the happy part was remembering what it was like when I was 22 and hanging out with a guy who frequently and awkwardly plunked me down in the middle of his social circle.  Even though it was awkward, I was with him and we held our little secrets away from the rest of the group.  It always made me feel special. 

The sad part of watching these two people was missing my 22-year-old self.  I want to say something like, “22 is such a heady time”, but frankly, I am not sure what heady means.  Thankfully, Google knows some sites that do and I’ve learned that heady means “tending to intoxicate.”  If you know anything about my life at 22, you’ll get a kick out of that.

But there’s another definition of heady that I found, “tending to upset the mind or the balance of the senses.”  That’s it right there.  For me, being 22 was like being constantly out of balance.  College self clashing with back-at-home self.  Party self rumbling with church self.  Finding my way in a new job while trying to hold on to friends who now lived across the country instead of across the hall.  Everything about my life was so unsettled and uncertain.  But it was so awesome!

There were endless possibilities.  I could move to New York, I could go to grad school, I could get an apartment with a friend, I could marry an amazing guy, I could get Flyers season tickets…  Along with the plentiful possibilities came drama, usually brought on by the guy I was hanging out with.

I don’t remember when life stopped being so heady.  Maybe when I stopped paying student loans and started paying a mortgage.  These days my life is a little more predictable, a lot less dramatic and I’m not sure I’d want to be 22 again.  But on a summer night, the potent combination of boys and uncertainty can be so intoxicating.