Being a role model

I found out the other day that one of the boys in the children's choir wrote an essay about me for women's history month. He named me as his role model because he says I'm so good at working with the choir and I'm so smart and helpful. This makes me even more acutely aware of the fact that, at any point in time, there is someone watching what I say and do.
I'm also a Tante, doing chicken duty about once a week for my little niece. She's only three months old, but already I catch her looking at me. The other day I had her while trying to write my paper - normally she'll camp out on my shoulder and let me write with my free hand but she was having none of it so she ended up in the sling. I tell you what, those baby sling things are so awesome - there is no such thing as one-handed research. Every now and then she'd pull her head up and look at me, eyebrows scrunched together, examining my chin and it made me wonder how aware she really is of what's going on around her. Did she hear me cursing my under my breath while I was redoing my footnotes? I hope not.

One of my first memories from early childhood involves feeding pigeons at Niagra Falls. The next one that immediately follows is getting spanked in pre-school. Want to know why? I snuck out of nap time with a book and they caught me reading in the girls' bathroom, sitting under the sink. Who were my role models? The principal of my school in first grade, because she let me into school even though I was younger than everyone else and below the state age requirement but acknowledged the fact that I could read and write and therefore deserved to be in school. My piano teacher, who gave me shit for not practicing. My high school choir teacher, who embarassed me in front of the entire class because I hadn't learned the accompaniment for the second movement of the Faure Requiem and attempted to sight-read in front of everyone. My college theory teacher, for really making us learn and never belittling us for making mistakes. My college piano teacher, for having the guts to tell me I wasn't going to be a concert pianist (something I already knew, but to have her say it took nerve) and then telling me that she still thought I was going to be a great musician. The dean of the honors college for being a ballsy woman in academics and telling me that I could be too. There have been many others before and since, but really I think we learn the most from the people we watch. That said, I'm putting my ass in bed so I can be on time to church tomorrow morning. You can't give the hairy eyeball to the kids for being late if you're straggling in as well.

I'm someone's role model. That's pretty awesome. And really scary, all at once.