MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter three

September 2000

Chilton Preparatory School, Hartford

08:00

THE ROOM fills with students in blue uniforms. Checked skirts growing shorter inch by inch. Heavy blazers half falling off. Ties that hang loose around necks, like nooses tying them to a system they can never escape from. I watch them file in, clique by clique, taking their seats based solely on popularity points rather than the seating chart I never cared to enforce. The most popular near the middle, where they can be heard far and wide. Surrounded by their loyal subjects.

Further afield sits the least popular. At the back, the kids who don't want to be here. They think about getting out of here and riding through town on the motorcycle they just fixed up. They think about food despite the fact they just had breakfast. They think about how many bathroom breaks they can cheat me out of so they don't have to talk about calculus for the next hour.

Nearer the front, are the nerdy kids who actually want to be here. I was one of them too, once upon a time. Always caring too much about grades, about joining as many extracurriculars to make my Yale application look good, about answering every question correctly. These are the kids who wear their uniforms perfectly. They throw their hands up in the air to be seen. They hand in assignments early as if that will get them extra marks – it doesn't, but they can dream.

My eyes flicker around my tenth graders but don't catch sight of my niece in any of the seats. If what Lorelai said was true, she'd bag a spot close to the front. She'd have to, just to be able to keep up. Any further back and she'd miss out on everything, caught up in the middle of who-said-what-and-when-and-where.

Register taking grows easier every morning. My students have warmed up to me as much as they can a math teacher, and every time I try an icebreaker – your coffee order? The last song you listened to? Dream job when you were seven? – most of them answer without having to be prompted.

The popular girls take to it like whipped cream, loving to talk about themselves with an air of pride that I recognise in my mother. Will they grow up to be Emily Gilmores? Married to the first man they fall in love with? Not lifting a finger because there's a maid doing all of that for you? Going to D.A.R meetings with the same girls surrounding them now? 

The girls at the back try to make a joke out of the question, with their socks rolled down and their blazers covered in badges I can't make out from here. The Lorelai's. Always trying to make trouble. Always not listening. And yet, they all get good grades just like she did – and yet, they'll all throw them away for the first boy in a band who dedicates a song to them. 

The girls at the front give perfectly polite answers. And there I am. It's odd to find myself reflected back in the students I'm so far apart from. They can never be me and I can never be them, generations separated by music and movies and pop culture we don't quite get, and yet, I'm right there, staring at myself. Staring at my mother. Staring at Lorelai.

A rapping knock comes from the door halfway through the lesson. I pause, eyes darting over to the wooden door, older than even my parents' house. My students pause too, heads all snapping towards the noise. Every other teacher and student knows better than to interrupt a Chilton lesson. The knock comes again and I put down my chalk. All my students watch as I stride across the classroom, shiny black heels click-clacking against the marble flooring. I swing open the door, ready to reprimand whoever interrupted my class – now my students are never going to be able to pay attention, no matter how fun I try to make math, they never seem to care – but am frozen in place immediately.