"Hardcore Hensel" Lives On!

So this nickname I have - and consequently the name of  my blog - comes from my student teaching days and Canyon View High School almost six years ago.  One of the students I had in a class at the time approached me and said he heard me on Power 91 (the college radio station) the night before hosting the hard-rock show.  I was confused as to why he thought it was me, and he said he heard me and my DJ name: Hardcore Hensel.  I of course profusely denied it...anyone who knows me knows how little I know hard rock.  But he swore it was me.  What added to his adament belief that it was in fact me was that I knew of a lot of bands - and probably only a song or two by them - that were popular during those few years.  I was coming out of my college "experimental" stage with bands I really could care less about now, but with the people I associated with predominately at the time the more bands you knew and the more obscure they were was like a badge of honor or something.  SO, becuase I knew of these then-obscure bands which have since been signed by major labels and have fallen victim to the commercialization of the music industry, it elevated me into the realm of being an actual candidate for something as "cool" as being a radio DJ (all it really takes is registering for an entry level communications class at SUU).  That became my nickname with a hadful of students.

So.  I started teaching at Cedar High.  Never thought I'd hear of Hardcore Hensel again.  Little did I know that some kids from CV would get kicked out of their school and sent to mine.  The same students that called me Hardcore Hensel.  So the legendary - if not fictional - persona continued on.  In spurts over the next few years it would come up, but the students who knew about it were starting to taper off - the usual victims of graduation or, as unluck would have it, the American teenage drop-out rate.  Until Friday.  A Cedar High student - who I have never taught, by the way - walked into my class and told me he knew my secret.  You can imaging my alarm (I was going to replace the plastic fork I "borrowed" from the cabinet above the faculty microwave, I promise!).  "Harcore Hensel" was his response.  It just so happens that when you live in a small town, the kids who dropped out of high school a few years before now work at the same fast food places that the current batch of publicly educated scholars are working at currently!  Ok, so maybe they don't work together, but they DO talk and/or hang out in the same circles.  The point is, even though I have crossed the threshold of the third decade of my life, there is still this coolness factor still within the grasp of my almost arthritic fingers (or so the 14 year olds tell me) and which I totally don't deserve but will half-heartedly-deny-with-a- smile-knowing-that-the-smile-tricks-them-into-thinking-that-I-am-trying-to-trick-them-into-thinking-it-wan't-really-me.  

Strangely enough this matters to me.  In the blogging world, I feel rather uncool with my lack of posts about my children and in-laws and husband and family vacations.  People don't respond to my posts, nor my single friends' blogs, like they do to the people who have kids.  But I was a DJ once which is TOTALLY cool. TOTALLY!  So I'll take the validation any way I can, even if it is just a standing inside joke! ; )