Latin students have conventions. Kind of like Star Trek conventions. We need to seek out our own nerdy kind. On the long bus ride back from one Saturday event, a student fell asleep on the seat, his head hanging back over the seat in the aisle.  A parent chaperone observed him from the back of the bus.

“Doesn’t anyone have any blue eye shadow?”

The students were instantaneously mobilized and silenced by these words. One girl leapt up and patrolled the aisle of the bus in search of makeup.

The mother attempted to look shocked at her own words.

“Did I just say that? No wonder I never get invited back anywhere.”

Handbags and makeup pouches were quietly pulled out, lest the sacrificial victim awaken, and contents emptied in a quest for  shiny, colorful powders. With infinite care the girl applied eyeshadow and blusher to the sleeping face.  Photographs were taken.

Half an hour later, sitting up, he noticed sparkly flakes all over his shirt and figured out that Something Had Happened.  The eldest son of the troublemaker mother looked at me.

“You know why I’m not sleeping? Because I’m too smart to fall asleep.”

With a mother like that, one evidently learns survival skills.  She is my hero.

One year later on the bus:  sacrificial victim wears large woolen hat pulled down to his nostrils.  Another student called me over.  “My mom sent something over for you.”

It was blue eyeshadow.