text: So I bumped into my favorite teacher from high school while getting coffee earlier today. Reminded me of an old story... Okay. I don’t want to get this dude in trouble so I’m not gonna use his real name. Let’s just call him, Professor Projector. Because he really loved his digital projector. Anyways, I had Professor Projector for history in ninth and tenth grade. Best teacher ever, man. Dude used to download illegal versions of video games on his computer and let me and my friends play them during our free periods. Plus, sometimes he’d just let us go to his room during study hall and move all of his desks out of the way to play hackey-sack for 42 mins. Like, for real, best teacher ever. But, yeah, story-wise, it was the day of the big homecoming pep rally, when I was in 11th grade. A few of my friends and I were all down in this hidden cage room behind the cafeteria decorating tee shirts and doing other stuff to get ready for the big assembly in the gym later that afternoon. In reality, we weren’t really actually doing anything. We were just pretending to get shit ready as an excuse to get out of class and hang out with the hot chicks in the cage room. Then, suddenly, this one troublemaker showed up. We’ll call him, Andy. And Andy opened up his bookbag to reveal a giant box of wine. So, one thing led to another, and before I knew it; we were all down in this cage room, drinking boxed wine, out of repurposed Fruitworks bottles. So, a couple of hours passed, and it was almost time to head over to the gym for the pep rally. And I was pretty fucking drunk, you guys. Was kinda stumbling. Slurring. Craving Mighty Taco. I had to pee so I left the cage room and went to the bathroom. And when I got back; all of my friends were gone. So now I was hammered and stumbling through the halls of my high school alone. The announcement was made saying for everyone to head to the gym. People immediately came rushing out of every classroom. The halls were flooded. The entire school started spinning in my head. But then a hand grabbed my shoulder. I looked up. Professor Projector. He was like, “Hey Ian, you look lost.” I just kinda stared at him for a second, and then I was like, “I’m looking for Mighty Taco.” He looked at me. He leaned in. He looked closer at me. Then he was like, “Ian...are you drunk?” And I was like, “Uhh..no I mean maybe kinda”. Professor Projector flipped out and pulled me into an empty classroom. He started shouting about how I could be suspended or expelled. Dude was seriously pissed off. I said something about just wanting Mighty Taco again, and I honestly thought he was gonna murder me. But he didn’t. Instead, Professor Projector just took a few minutes to calm down. And then he was like, “Alright, here’s the deal. You stay BY MY SIDE for this entire pep rally. You talk to ABSOLUTELY NO ONE. By not turning you in right now; I’m putting MY ASS ON THE LINE. DON’T SCREW ME!” And just like that, Professor Projector and I left the classroom and began making our way to the gym. I was literally struggling to walk straight so he had his fucking arm around me keeping me up. People tried talking to him or me, but we just kinda ignored them and kept moving. We made it the assembly. He got us up to our seats in the stands. And then BOOM. I just like immediately passed out. Ya know, with like my head on his shoulder or whatever. He woke me up when the pep rally ended. He dragged me down the stands and out of the gym. He found some of my friends. He threw me at them. And he was just like, “Guys, get Ian the hell out of here right now!” I remember being a little worried about the whole situation when I got to school the following Monday. But, fortunately, Professor Projector never told anybody, and, instead, he just punished me his own way. So, for the next two weeks or so, instead of video games and hackey-sack during my free periods; it was just helping this dude put together PowerPoint presentations for his god damn digital projector. So, yeah, that’s the story of the time a teacher caught me drunk at school and just went above and beyond to have my back and make sure my stupid ass didn’t get in any actual trouble. And I’ve never forgotten it. Finally, as just a little bookend to this, when the time eventually came for me to graduate from high school; they allowed students to request their diploma be given to them on stage by a specific teacher if desired. So, naturally, I requested that Professor Projector be the one to hand me my diploma. And so he did. On stage at Artpark, in front of everybody. And, when I got back to my seat and opened it; I discovered that, inside, he’d hidden a gift certificate to Mighty Taco.