I'll never forget the female teacher who taught me much about life. She was an unusual woman, hard as nails but soft at the same time, slick, like a needle. She liked me. I was charming, hadn't been hurt yet, was confident, we flirted a lot. She understood the flippantness of people in a way that I would not come to understand for another 10 years at least. Very little surprised or shocked her. "Was, until it wasn't" was a phrase she might say, but she was still human, under her porcelain veneer, I saw that weakness and that fragility and I wanted to protect her, so that she could teach me more.