Student Requests Wham!; Teacher Obliges

Two things happened today. Independent of one another, each event may have been considered terrible. In combination, what resulted can only be described as magical.

First, Al Student decided that there was no time like when Rebecca Teacher was rambling on about plurals to request music. “Rebecca Teacher, you know that song… that song, with the… you know...” Al Student stands up and proceeds dancing at this point, to illustrate the soundtrack that is looping in his mind. I stare at him blankly. Al Student has a penchant for interrupting me with randomness which is rarely relevant to the lesson but is almost always related to English class in some way, so I tend to give him a pass on these distractions. Al Student is frustrated that the music hasn’t moved from his mind to reality, and stops dancing. “Rebecca, you know… wake me up before you go…. Go?”

As it turns out, today was Al Student’s lucky day. I assured him that I knew it and waved him over to my desk. I pulled my MP3 player out of my desk, cued up my copy of Wham!, and told Al Student to listen. Al Student began dancing again. “Teacher, song is so exciting!” I smiled and nodded. I wrote “Wham!” on the board and asked why on earth he knew that song. He told me that he had no idea and went back to dancing.

The other students had started playing tic tac toe during this exchange, totally oblivious to the awesomeness of The Wham! Experience.

Reflecting on this later, a couple of things beg explanation. To start, of all the songs that Al Student could possibly have had floating in his head… Wham!’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.’? Really? Is there a nifty new Korean computer game that sports this as its theme song? Because not only would that explain everything: that would be awesome. Let’s just say it’s that; any other explanation would compare inadequately at this point. With that solved, there is a second question: why on earth is Wham! readily available on my MP3 player? I’m reminded of the time that I was rocking out to the theme to Jesus Christ Superstar on the subway one day. My friend looked at me, horrified, and asked: “Why?” After responding with the obligatory, “Why wouldn’t you have Jesus Christ Superstar on your MP3 player”, I advised her that I thought it was ridiculous, ridiculous things make me happy, so I had added it for purposes of immediate ecstasy. A short time after that, I retired Jesus Christ Superstar and found room for Wham! Everybody wins: Me. Al Student. Wham.

Of course, next time somebody takes a listen through my MP3 player and says something like “Rebecca… Will Smith? Really?” I can save myself some shame and claim that one of my students requested it.