I now know horror...

...and thy name is seeing-your-grade-school-teachers-dance-the-limbo.

So, here is am in St. Louis for the National Catholic Educational Association annual conference. This year the conference since the conference is in St. Louis, every school in the area, that's seven states that touches the good ole MO, is here, including almost every teacher from my old grade school. By the way, many of whom taught me. I left Kansas City, and not for nothing, but for a damn good reason. If I wanted to know everyone whereever I went and have them know me and my life story, I would have stayed, but I didn't. I could have very happily gone through life without seeing my old gym teacher. Common, I'm 5'2" now (I was shorter in grade shool and it is possible), I'm asian, and I debated through grade school, high school and college, yup that's TEN years of full out dorkyness. I didn't need that woman getting down on me for not making a layup shot. Basketball does not enrich the life of a short asian girl. I don't got game, and I never will, yet I live a very full life.

So, tonight my boss was off doing work things, which left me all alone in a midwest city. Not much to do. The conference arranged for a river boat ride on the Mississippi, which I wouldn't have to pay for. So, I go, figure Catholic educators have got to be a nice bunch of people, I'll talk to someone. Dinner goes by, dessert goes by, then the dancing starts. And that's when about 1.5 hours of pure horror started for me. Imagine the teachers that you had in grade school, on a dance floor dancing. Keep in mind, we are in the midwest and most of these educators are from the midwest (read: middle-class white people). There was a congo line, there was limbo line, there was a boa that was used to 'sexily' pull other people towards the wearer of the boa, there was a nun in a boa dancing. Did I mention the nun in the boa? Did I mention that you should imagine your grade school teacher dancing to Get Down On It? I actually saw my seventh grade teacher do a dive under a limbo bar. The teacher I had more than a decade ago was dancing, shaking her hips, and generally making me wish I was blind. It's one thing for your teachers to busta move at the school dance, but this, this was different. This was horrific.

It's said that you can never return home, but home shouldn't have changed like this for me. Never again will I look at grade school teachers the same.

My heart is in Maryland, soon Pennsylvania.