I had an epiphany this afternoon while laughing at something a student said: this may be the best group of students I'll have for quite a while. I mean I have really gotten to like some of them very much, and they like me, and we have good times in the classroom and there are tons of laughs.

And next year I'll be in the middle school, teaching English to 7th and 8th graders. I am looking forward to working with this most maligned age group, but I will truly miss the lovely personalities I've come to know in the high school.

I also had this little insight: there is some kind of amazing element to having high school boys pay the kind of attention to me that they do now that I am 48 years old and not 18. I mean, I had friends in high school and all, but not this kind of intense solicitation of my judgment (which lasts about as long as the students are in my classes, more or less). It almost feels like I am fooling them... it's hard to explain. Like if I were their age, they would not have much interest in me at all (at least a few of them). Like now I am getting back for all the indifference I suffered when I was actually in high school myself.

Is this a bad thing? I mean, one ought not to go into teaching to "get back" at anybody from their own school days. Or to "get" anything they didn't "get" when they were there, in days of yore. It's not like I have any crushes or anything. It's just that it's nice to have feelings of affection for these kids, boys and girls alike.