"BEAST"

I specifically remember when I was younger (middle and high school) and my parents would make fun of some of the new cool words we would use, such as "phat" or "the bomb." I always thought they were such fuddy-duds for not knowing those words and thinking they were stupid.

As a teacher I've never thought of myself as "cool." Even if a few students may like me, it would always be that I'm "cool for a teacher," not just a cool person in general, and I'm okay with that. But even so, I guess I would have considered myself to be fairly up with the time of trends and fads. I mean, come on, I have PEOPLE magazine delivered to my house biweekly, along with Entertainment magazine once per month. So I would have thought that I'm generally up on what's going on in pop culture. Well yesterday I realized I was competely wrong, and for the first time, I understand how my parents must have felt a long time ago...

There was some confusion with the bell schedule yesterday so my 8th graders were packed up and waiting to leave for about 3 minutes of class. We were all standing near the door waiting for the bell when I look over and notice a student (we'll call him Joe) writing something on my board in bold red marker: "Mrs. Kreider is BEAST." Having no idea what "Beast" meant but knowing that this particular student isn't a complete idiot, I say to the young man standing next to me, "Please tell me that *Joe* isn't seriously writing something bad about me... on my board... while I'm watching him!" I guess I thought "Beast" must be somehow synonymous with "witch" or something like that, and I just couldn't believe that he would write that in front of me.

The young man looked at the board and replied, "What? Beast? Oh, no, that means you're awesome."

In total confusion I reply, "What? Beast means awesome? Who in the world came up with that?"

He looked at me in complete disbelief that I didn't know any of this and just like I probably looked at my own parents years ago. "'Lil Wayne came up with it." The hidden meaning in the tone he used to tell me this was, "Oh my gosh, woman, do you seriously not know anything?" It was hilarious.

So apparently I'm a beast. Or no, I guess not A beast, just BEAST, which I guess is a good thing. I'm not sure how I feel about the image that comes to mind, though, of my head on the body of one of the Wild Things. But I suppose I'll take whatever weird compliments I can get from my 8th graders. :-) And I guess the old addage is actually true:

You learn something new every day.