Small Town Street Cred

“Do your students really believe the illuminati is as far reaching as ----- ?” my friend asked, after I  finished describing my day to her. 

Currently, I spend my afternoons supervising a high school study hall.  Said high school exists in a very small town in Wisconsin, and the students of this high school have a strange fascination with the illuminati.  Some of you might remember when the students first shared this interest with me last fall.

Today, after having spoken to a group of sophomore boys about using their study time more productively, one posed the following question: “Mrs. Ryan, are any white folks in the illuminati?”

“Of course they are,” I replied, as though this were a perfectly normal and expected question for any student to ask of his teacher.  You know, “How do you solve this math equation? What’s a comma splice?  Who was our 18^th president?  Who is the most prominent Caucasian figure in the illuminati?” Those are all just run of the mill academic questions.

“Well, it seems to me,” the young man continued, “That the illuminati is made up of mostly black rappers.  I wasn’t sure they let white people in.” 

I believe it was at this point in sharing the story when my friend stated, “Shit, if your students were half as concerned with their coursework as they were with the racial make-up of the illuminati, they would all be geniuses.”  Genius was a bit hyperbolic, but I certainly concurred with her intended point.

In that actual moment, I shook my head at him.  I did add, though, that there was reason to believe Justin Bieber is associated with the illuminati.  They accepted this response for two reasons.  The first is that I’ve become my small town’s resident expert on the illuminati. The second justification was the very logical explanation I provided them – How the hell else could the Biebs be so fucking popular without the help of a secret Satanic society? That little douche-bag no doubt sold his soul to Satan. 

**Author’s Note: Calm the fuck down; I didn’t use that language when explaining this to the students.  The language was clean, but the message was the same. **

“Hmmm …” they nodded with intrigue after I provided my affirmation of Bieber’s occult involvement.  However, they still continued on with concerns that the illuminati were exhibiting reverse racism.  “Still, it’s a lot of black dudes.  I mean, Lil’ Wayne, Jay-Z, DMX …”

“No, no,” I interrupted the student here, “DMX is not involved in the illuminati,” I declared with conclusive resolve.  

“What? Yeah he is,” another student argued in defense of his friend.

“No, he’s not,” I fixedly reaffirmed.

“How do you know?” yet another student asked.  How dare he question my knowledge base, especially when it came to this crucial topic?

“Because he told me,” I calmly asserted.

At this point, I briefly explained my now infamous encounter with DMX at last year’s Zombie Pub Crawl in Minneapolis.  I may have left a few parts out, like just how ungodly intoxicated I was. Whatev.

When my word was outrageously doubted by a few of the students, I brought up an image of DMX and me using the flickr app on the student’s chromebook.

“Holy shit!” one of the students yelled, and the others all looked at me in great awe and wonder.  They made similar comments, void of the curse words as I had reprimanded their friend for his inappropriate language.

**Another Author’s Note: I’m not a hypocrite.  I keep my language situation appropriate.  I don’t drop f-bombs in schools, churches, or nursing homes.  Everywhere else it’s open season. **

“That is so cool! You really did confront DMX. That’s crazy, Mrs. Ryan. Like, I think that dude killed people and you called him out for his language.”

“That’s right,” I avowed, “so don’t think you’re going to get away with your foul or inappropriate language here.”  If mother fucking DMX didn’t intimidate me, I wasn’t about to be daunted by their scrawny little fifteen-year-old asses.

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool.  Okay.  I totally think you’re the coolest teacher here now,” one young boy announced, “You have, like, major street cred.”

My proclaimed major street cred aside, one of these boys still persisted with his argument.  “Yeah, that’s cool, but I still think the illuminati doesn’t accept whites.”

“Yes they do,” his friend argued, coming quickly to the kick-ass teacher’s defense. “Tom Cruise is illuminati.”

“No,” I informed them, “He’s not illuminati. He’s a scientologist.” Get your shit together, kids. 

Get your shit together.  You can’t go around confusing the illuminati with L. Ron Hubbard lovers, for fuck’s sake.  These kids will never make it on the rough streets of this town.