I got to go back to high school for a semester.

Not as a teacher, but rather a student... the tall white guy with dreads who doesn't have to wear the school uniform and wanders around the hallways aimlessly day-in and day-out, asking questions like:

"Who is your girlfriend?" and

"Where is your boyfriend?" and

"Don't you hate such and such teacher?" and

on and on and on.

The questions teachers aren't supposed to ask students are the only questions worth asking, the questions that tell the world and then a little bit more.

Like the discovery that our assistant principal told parents of students headed to Nebraska for a school trip that, "There is no need to worry because Nebraska doesn't have very many black people."

This is the same guy who travels to America with the students but has Japanese food freeze dried in advance and sent ahead of him via express mail--because he hates American food just that much.

(And it's not cheap to air mail 20 pounds of boxed lunches, either.)

It's the stuff I learned as a student.

Who likes who and who is hot and who is not... and which teacher messed around with the school director's daughter and was fired... and

on and on and on.

The students who have crushes on teachers...

The students who know more about Kabukicho than you...

The students...

And then you "graduate" again, and are gone and it's all just a memory fading away... a longing in the back of you mind that sometimes calls out to you and says, "I wish I could go back to high school..."