How to tell if you are married to a teacher

How do you know if you married a teacher? Teachers are teachers because they can’t help it. It certainly isn’t the pay, prestige, and well behaved children we send them.

The other day, my wife had her students write about their families. First, you will be glad to know, one of the first things that my too kind and loving wife discusses at parent-teacher conference is, “Look, I won’t believe everything that your kids tell me about you; if you won’t believe everything they tell you about me.”

To get them going on the writing assignment, she had to give them more direction. “Write a paragraph about each person in your family. Try to describe them… like tell me what color their hair is or what their favorite food is.”

A hand immediately shot up, “I don’t know what color my mom’s hair is... she always dyes it.”

That brought about giggles and consensus from all the kids that they have no idea what color their mother’s hair is. Except one girl explains you just have to look at their roots, “that’s their real color.”

Another boy declared, “My dad hates my mother’s meatloaf. He fed it to our dog once when she wasn’t looking.”

“Yeah! My dad drinks coffee, but we aren’t supposed to tell anybody. Can I put that in my story?”

One little boy, we’ll call him Eric, who comes from a large family, handed in his paper. As my too kind and loving wife looked it over, she noticed that he had forgotten one of his siblings.

She inquired about it and he looked surprised, “Huh? Whadda ya know? You know you’re right.”

He took his paper and was about to go back to his desk to fix it but decided that the day was too nice and recess too short to worry about details like an extra sibling, so he turned back around and handed her the paper and said, “I don’t really like Thomas anyway.”

And with that scampered outside.

Most people, and especially kids, can spot a teacher a million miles away. If a kid is ever lost, they always come up to my too kind and loving wife and ask directions. When I walk by, little kids grab their mother’s pant leg and look suspiciously at me out of the corner of their eye.

Little things are a dead give away that you are married to a teacher. While eating, I notice that she pushes my glass away from the edge of the table and watches carefully to make sure I don’t hide my vegetables in my milk or feed them to Turbo.

When I finish eating and get up, grab my plate, rinse it, and put it in the dish washer, she grandly announces, “I like the way you did that.” and continues, “Daniel, did you see how your father acted so big and rinsed his own plate?”

That’s it! That is how you know if you are married to teacher. We went to Moab to see a movie for date night, and she about got me into a fight with a 300 pound gorilla a thick neck and a gold tooth.

Gorilla-man butted in front of us and she called out, “Excuse me... there are no cuts in this line!” I was already scrambling to give him my lunch money.

And just before we go into the movie, she announces “Does anyone need to go to the bathroom before the movie starts? We won’t have anyone leaving the movie and disturbing everyone once the lights go out!”

Once one of the ladies decides she had better go, they all decide to go to the bathroom together. I decide to test the guys, just to see how comfortable they were with their feminine side. “Hey Bubba... want to go to the bathroom with me?” He avoided eye contact and shuffled away from me.

The movie we went to watch was “27 Dresses”. A “romantic comedy”, which is a code word for Chick-Flick! Nobody was wounded or shot, no helicopter crashed, nobody had to find a handy internet-café and hack into FBI headquarters. It all seemed so unbelievable.

Gorilla-man is squirming in his seat directly in front of us and she flips him with her index finger and firmly whispers, “Sit still! You are disturbing everybody.”

Later, when Gorilla-Man sneezes, without thinking she hands him a tissue. And after the movie is finished and we are about to leave, she announces, “Movie is over...everybody pick up their mess and get in a single file line, first one with everything picked up gets to lead.”

It is obvious that the Gold-Toothed Gorilla-man isn’t nearly as tough as I thought he might be, or maybe he is married to a teacher too, because he hustled up and was beaming with his gold-tooth-grin, hoping to get to be in the front of the line.