Je suis très embarrassé

Each time I play the moment over (and over) again, I wince. It all started innocently enough -- a parent of a boy in my class coming in to read a children's book she has written. The children were nestled on the rug, sitting criss-cross, elbows digging into their knees and chins in their palms. I felt it was very important to show the students how ordinary, everyday people-- people just like them-- can become published authors. We write in school everyday and at the time, they were writing their own personal narratives about an experience they have had in their own lives. This children's book was based on the woman's son, my student, and the whole lot of us delighted in the experience of a real author reading her own real book to us. It was a beautiful moment.

I had planned an activity for the kids based on the book, where they would each illustrate on of the pages of the original book that I had photocopied. They had only the words by which to create their page in our version of the story. The students hummed and laughed while depicting their pages, respectfully asking each other for the green crayon or the orange marker. They complimented each other's illustrations while the mom and I stood off to the side, both feeling rather proud of our work-- she, her book, and I, my rocking class!

"What was the most difficult part of the writing process for you, Mom?" I asked. (We'll call her Mom.)

"Well, the writing actually poured out of me. Raising my son showed me that motherhood was, umm... Let's just say, I found a way to channel all the frustrations of raising a son into a humorous story. Lemonade out of lemons, you know? And once I realized that everything he was doing could easily be turned into an adventurous picture book, the words and the story just came right out onto the paper. The hardest part was finding a publisher!" she laughed.

"I know what you mean about finding a place for all those experiences. My best friend and I have had quite eventful years. She is in med school and I'm teaching and we're both realizing that college is long over. Anyway, we started a blog to chronicle the craziness of it all, and having a the blog is like having a place to reflect and make sense of everything."

"Miss Jo, Jimmy is using the blue but I told him I needed the blue and now he won't give it back!" I heard someone yell from the peanut gallery.

"Sorry, Mom. Duty calls!" I said as I rushed over to deal with the blue crayon situation.

"Jimmy, Kate just said she wants the crayon and you are currently using red. The crayons aren't yours to guard, and I'm sure she'll return the blue to the pack once she's finished. Right, Kate?" My two needy friends nodded and I quickly circled around the other tables, watching for any other fires that needed putting out.

"Sorry about that, Mom. We're still learning to share I guess." I apologized, hoping she was impressed with my soft manner, my delicate approach, my air of composure and calm.

"No problem! I know what it's like!" she smiled. "Hey, what's the name of your blog?"

"It's--" and there it was! The moment my secret, personal identity collided with my very public, professional identity. And those two lives do not mesh well.

I felt heat radiate off my blushing face, and I imagined that at the moment I looked like a cartoon character whose level of embarrassment could be measured by the line of red creeping up my face as if being filled with Kool-Aid. "It's, um. Ha, ha (note: nervous laughter). It's called Un Petite Mort."

She tilted her head to the side and squinted. "Hmm, a- big- death? Is that it?" I realized I had all of one hot second to talk myself out of this one, when, as if struck by lightening, Mom jerked her head back and gasped, "Oh!!! Oh! Un petite mort!"

And all I could do, I did. I wrinkled my forehead, smiled, and shrugged. "Well, it's actually nothing like that other petite mort that you're thinking of. It's just that my friend and I totally over use the phrase and are always taking things to the extreme. We're always 'dying' or saying, 'Could you die, right now?;' You know?" Yes, Jo, I'm sure she knew what I meant because she looked like she wanted to die at that moment.

Luckily Mom was super cool and just laughed and giggled to herself. She even emailed me later saying that she thought the moment, albeit awkward, was incredibly humorous! Go figure. However, I couldn't stop asking myself, "Does she trust me to teach her child?" When I begrudgingly uttered the name of this blog I saw flashes of this alternate persona of myself: I saw myself, scantily clad and adorned with a fluffy pink boa, sipping on cosmopolitans and telling racy jokes, all the while teaching my third graders addition or punctuation or geography. At the time, I was actually wearing a sunshine yellow cardigan and grey trousers at the time, but my little blog omission had the power to instantly disolve the image I presented as Pollyanna, the prim and proper teacher.

Throughout the week, as I reflected on this experience (and every time getting flushed and uncomfortable), I happened to attend a lecture on Danny Lyons, the American photographer from the 1960s. His work chronicled the Civil Rights Era as well as various motorcycle gangs that had formed across the country. Ironically enough, at some invisible moment during his two years of documenting the gangs, he became an accepted member of them. Talk about blurring the line between your professional and personal lives! One of his black and white photographs depicted a bikerider whose face was splattered with mud. The contrast of the subject's pale face behind the dark mud gave the impression that the man was wearing a mask. At that point, the lecturer posed the notion of "masking."

"This image almost forces us to question the masks we wear in our own lives. And I don't mean a mask that you wear on your face, but your entire presentation-- your clothes, your posture, your expressions. It's just interesting to think about the masks that we wear and when we wear them and how they change the way we are in the world. Something to think about."

And being the diligent student I am, I did think about that and then couldn't stop. Growing up, my sister and I were always in costume. I can actually chronicle the milestones in my life by what outfit I was wearing at the time, going all the way back to my first day of kindergarten: golden yellow shirt dress with a side pocket from the Gap. So when the prophetic lecturer threw out those ideas of masks, I was taken aback even more so since I was at that point analyzing the "teacher me" and the "personal me" -- the me I am during the day and the me I am with my friends when I go downtown to the West Village. Part of the reason I was so embarrassed by telling Mom about my blog was because my different masks were competing for attention. During the day I wear a rainbow of cardigans and clogs, using the tone and timbre of my voice to manage the behavior of my students. And after work, when I'm with my husband in our cozy apartment, I'm completely relaxed, usually wearing cuffed boyfriend jeans and white T-shirts, and am not afraid to kick my feet up and relax. The other roles and personas I take on are no different than anyone else's really, we all slip in and out of our social and professional and personal masks.

But what I have started to think about is whether or not my roles are truly as defined and isolated as I make them out to be. Why should I be embarrassed by a blog whose title means orgasm in French even though I am a fabulous and very appropriate teacher of children(if I say so myself)? I'm not sure what the answer is exactly or how I feel about my various well-outfitted roles, but I do know the next time a parent asks me what I do outside of school, I won't be so quick to tell her I write for a blog titled 'Orgasm.' That much I know for sure!