Ah, I am not as lame as you thought

Friday is often test day in the Chanman classroom. As I was briefing my 7th period 8th graders with their instructions for the test, I imparted some last-minute piece of obscure historical information in order to further explain something about the War of 1812 that the students kept not getting. Do I remember what the obscure info was? Nope.

I must have impressed the students, because I got the question I sometimes get from my students: How do you know all this stuff? My standard answer is that I'm a history teacher; I have to know this stuff. Some students then decided to put me to the test by asking me about the Presidents, such as who was the 19th president? Rutherford B. Hayes; who was the 23rd president? Benjamin Harrison, and so on. In fairness, they picked the wrong topic, because I have had the chronological order of presidents memorized since the fifth grade. After discovering they weren't going to stump me with the presidents, someone got cute and said, "What year did Mac Dre die?"

"2002," I said - eyes began to widen.

"How about Tupac?" said another student.

"1996," I said - murmurs of amazement began to ripple through the classroom.

"What about Biggie Smalls?" said another student.

"1997," I said - Now the murmurs became a cacophany of "No way!"

"How about Aaliyah?" said another student.

I said, "This is the last one and then we have to get the test started... she died in 2001."

Of course before we could start the test, my students wanted to know how I, a lame-o 36 year-old white guy who doesn't wear saggy pants and sometimes listens to Elton John during the last few minutes of class and who was their age in 1986 (they didn't say all that, but you can bet they were thinking it), could possibly know this critical information about their favorite thuggish hip-hop artists.

I told them, "How else? I read."

Good Day to You, Sir