An English Teacher Confesses Her Eminem Habit

I have to thank Eminem for the inspiration to write my first-ever true blog post. Or rather, “a shout out to my boi Eminem for being cool as shit.” Or some such. I can’t speak hip-hop. I know this makes me a geek, but this is how I talk. Try to look past it.

Everyone has this mental image of English teachers: images that come from Miss Landers, Mr. Garrison, and that one teacher you had years ago that never stopped talking about Shakespeare (and honestly seemed to enjoy it.) You know, the one whose nuts you stapled to a stack of papers?

Anyway, I have that same image too. In some ways I fit that image, and in some ways I don’t. Whenever I hear, “You don’t talk like an English teacher,” I just start telling them about how I read the dictionary. That usually clears things up.

Part of that image is that we are the guardians of lovely language. I enjoy a wide range of language, and am thrilled when I find some specimen of language that ignites me in some way. And Eminem does. So, I listen to Eminem because I’m an English teacher, not in spite of it.

More interesting is the reaction students have when I mention him. They thought I lived in a Jack-In-The-Box behind my desk, activated by the arrival of the bus in the morning. They didn’t know I got TV or radio down there in the steel cage. And they assumed that the box had warped my brain and my ability to “shake that” to the point that I’d immediately dismiss him without listening.

“YOU know who Eminem is?”

I just laugh. They’re so cute.

I first heard Eminem in ATL waiting in traffic, very late and quite drunk (but not driving!) My (black) friend said, “Listen to this guy. He’s white, but he has his own style.” Notice she had to mention he was white BUT he still had style? Funny. She played “Sing for the Moment” and “8 Mile.”

I was hooked, but I had to hide it from my oppressively controlling X-husband, who would have bitched me out 12 ways for listening to that “devil music.” So I went to a P2P service & got as much Eminem music as I could, which wasn’t much because most of what I downloaded was labeled ‘Eminem’ but was actually blank. (This is something I have always had a theory about: How hard would it be for Em to hire someone to distribute these blank files virally to protect his copyright in a perfectly legal, clever way without alienating his fans?) So I ended up with only a few songs, most of which I don’t remember except for “Closet,” “Superman,” and the aforementioned two.

Then I decided to leave the oppressively controlling X and forgot about Eminem for a while. I lost those pirated files. Then “Curtain Call” came out. And we were out of school for a snow day or two. And I was bored. So I bought it. (No more P2P, I promise, Em. It screws up my computer.)

And it was such a fun Christmas. I appreciate that about him. He’s really fun.

But I get tired of the comments: “I thought you were educated!”

I will defend him in another post, but usually I just sing to myself, “I’m not Mr. ‘N Sync, I’m not what your friends think.”