Blackboard Diaries

It was about the most romantic date setting possible - outdoor cafe, beautiful evening, little candles on the tables - until I heard the giggling. I sat up straighter and reached for the water glass instead of my wine. Within moments, they were at our table, two students from last year's junior English class eager to chat about their summer vacations. I made introductions, describing my companion as a "friend." The girls looked him up and down, inspecting his clothes, his hair, his face. When they moved away, the man let his breath out. "Whew," he said. "That was worse than running into a woman's dad on the first date." Then he paused. "It must be weird for the kids to see their teacher on a date."

His was a comment I get often, especially since I began writing about my love life in the pages of this magazine. Consciously or not, many of us see teachers as people who spring out of the linoleum each morning at 7:30 and burrow back into it at 2:55 p.m. I still remember running into my own junior high English teacher at the hairdresser's and being appalled. I saw my teachers as static beings whose hair didn't grow, who were either married (and always had been) or wholesome spinsters (and had never wanted to be anything else), people whose sole concern in life was, well, teaching. They were not supposed to shop or cut their hair or even eat, and there was something deeply unsettling when I realized that they did. It was like trying to wrap my head around the idea that my parents had lives before I was born.

Most of us figure out that teachers do have lives, but we persist in expecting theirs to be more wholesome than the average person's. So some of my teacher friends studiously avoid socializing, and even buying groceries, in the towns where they teach. I understand their feelings - they want to be private citizens, not public figures - but I also think it is not, and should not be, weird for a teacher to date. I'm a single 31-year-old woman; of course I'm going to date. Besides, what's unwholesome about dating?

I know: sex. Eww. Gross. Teachers, like parents, aren't supposed to know anything about sex. We certainly aren't supposed to have sex, especially what with MCAS scores the way they are. But sex, and everything that leads up to it, are awfully interesting to teenagers. Whenever I am with a date and run into students, I wish I could bottle up their rapt attention and uncork it onto Dickens the next morning.

I am aware, very aware, that I am as much their teacher in these moments as in the classroom, that they will notice my clothes and my demeanor, that they will look to see what dating is like in the post-high-school world. Occasionally, this knowledge feels inhibiting, and I wish I could leave Ms. Lobron at home on Saturday nights. But then I remind myself that it's not going to scar kids to see me on a date, that I don't have to give in to the linoleum expectation. Similarly, it's not going to scar the man, either. Seeing my life in context might even help him get to know me.

And I suspect most students who bump into me are glad to discover that I have a life, if they think about it after the fact at all. Mostly, though, they do not think about it. Teenage interest is intense but fleeting. Within hours, my love life will be subsumed by other dramas.

A few years ago, I gave a goodbye hug to a man outside the Porter Square T station. When I stepped back, two graduates of my school were gaping at us. One held out his hand to my companion in a man-to-man way. "I'm a former student of Ms. Lobron's," he said. He got a firm handshake in return.

"I'm her big brother."

The boy looked at me and winked, as if to let me know I could own up, he was out of school, he wasn't shocked. "Oh," he said. "Her brother. Nice to meet you."

After the boys walked away, I said, "I wonder if I should be glad or worried that they really want me to have a sex life."

"You have a sex life?" My brother winced. "Eww. Gross."

Alison Lobron lives in Concord. E-mail comments to mailto:coupling@globe.com.