A Kid I Taught Called Nick.

Tonight at the Sydney Road IGA I saw a kid I taught when I was at Princes Hill Secondary. He looked exactly the same - that is to say, like a total douchebag. I don't often have personality clashes with kids, but this one definitely irritated the hell out of me, just by being him.

Overall it was a pretty good school though, and the kids generally went out into the world and did some pretty interesting things. I guess I did likewise, moving into alternative education - first on a different continent, and then back here in Melbourne. Lately, though, I've been missing kids like that - kids who are generally excited about knowing and learning stuff, who get your literary jokes, who are engaged politically, who don't want to stab you. I also feel like I've been missing out on a whole heap of serious educational theory - like I've been away in the trenches for the last seven years and have come home to a world that has passed me by a little bit. It's a strange position to be in, and I reckon I've got a lot of catching up to do.

But I wasn't going to start by saying hi to this douchebag. I'm pretty sure he didn't see me anyway - he had his eyes downwards, and was clumping along in that deliberately self-aware, falsely emotive way he always had. I bought some celery and left him to it.

Rosie The Student Teacher.

Tonight at the Sydney Road IGA I saw a girl called Rosie who was a student teacher at a school I was teaching at a while back. I'd already seen her recently, playing for an opposing team in pub footy, which explains how I'd recognized someone I'd known for about two weeks in 2007.

She was always a pretty good egg though, putting up with our terrible jokes and sticking around for hours after school to drink and talk shit. We were a pretty tight-knit group at that school, at least until the broad variety of political philosophies became insurmountable. It didn't end well. I ended up on page three of The Age, speaking out against Christian groups and their incursions into public schools, and left the school soon afterwards.

Rosie also popped up in the paper between her two interactions with me. She was in the Herald-Sun for some BikeFest article, and because I'm around bikes a heap, both virtually and in real life, eventually I saw it. In the photo the sun was shining and she was on some ladies stepthrough, looking the picture of Cycle Chic.

Tonight, though, neither of us were in the news. Instead we were in the canned vegetables aisle. We met eyes, cocked our heads at each other, then went our separate ways.

I also saw the best friend of an exgirlfriend of mine, who studiously avoided me. I was alright with that.