as the classroom turns

Last week, I briefly introduced the soap opera that is my LSAT classroom. Allow me to update.

Firstly, we have the character known as Rich Girl. Rich Girl is a college student at the local small private ($$$$) liberal arts college that is located smack dab in the middle of our conservative military heavy city. As with much of the other students I've had from this institution, Rich Girl is intelligent, inquisitive, confident, charitable, and well taken care of financially by the family. And, also typical of her college mates, she is not pretentious in the least. It's a delight to have her in class. She's also quite cute in a rich liberal college student girl kind of way. She's in her early 20's.

Then we have Bartender who is, you guessed it, a bartender. I can admit here that Bartender is currently one of my favorite students. C'mon, name a teacher who is truly unbiased! Bartender is rather rough around the edges. He typically comes to class in faded frayed jeans, tennis shoes, a well-worn t-shirt, and a baseball cap. His voluntarily unshaven face nicely rounds out the ensemble. He is boyishly charming in that he appears comfortable in any setting, speaks freely, laughs with abandon, and is just basically a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. He's somewhere around 30 years old.

So, one night last week, we were analyzing arguments. One such argument attempted to prove that Beethoven had had a venereal disease, to which Rich Girl posed the question:

"Uhm.... what's a venereal disease?"

To which Bartender responded with absolute side-splitting laughter.

The rest of the class, myself included, found amusement in this question as Rich Girl is the baby of the class. We realized that "VD" is not a term people her age are that familiar with. STD is the new VD.

So as we explained the meaning of venereal disease to her, Bartender continued with the laughter. No, he was not merely chuckling, not snickering, nor did he just let out one good guffaw and leave it at that. He was unabashedly and gleefully cracking up.

Not surprisingly, Rich Girl found amusement in this too, rather than becoming self-conscious about her cluelessness of the term.

But, I must say, I don't see the two of them heading off, hand-in-hand, into the sunset. Oh, and I had such high hopes. It probably didn't help that Bartender happened to be wearing an old faded version of this shirt at the time: