the wrong roommate

I almost died when I opened my grade seven book last week. Felt my heart jump into my throat and my eyes pop.

I closed the book.
Sat down. Breathed.
Stood up.
Opened the book.

I had to sit down again.

I hadn’t imagined it. She was still there, full-page and glossy, with that stupid moral dilemma look on her face and a ghouly-looking thing standing behind her.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy and I have had a tumultuous relationship. Some of the people who I love most dearly in this world have a mildly unhealthy obsession with everything Buffy. It might have been ok were it not for two details. The first: that I lived with two of them. The second: that I had the brilliant idea of organizing a group gift of the entire series on DVD to one of them…while we were still living in the same house.

To make a long story short, I grew jealous of Buffy as she took over my living room and my housemates every evening. Over the year, jealousy morphed into hatred. I thought we had reached an agreement last June when we decided to avoid further damage by simply keeping our distance.

Following me to Spain was not part of the agreement.

Pearson-Longman has tried very (too?) hard to make this textbook cool. Every unit ends with a pop song (everything from The Beatles to Vengaboys), there’s a soap-opera on DVD that accompanies the text, and everything is very colourful. Unit 4 is about daily life. Instead of boring exercises and word lists, students learn to tell the time by asking about flight departures from Sunnydale Airport and pick up vocabulary (go to bed, have breakfast, go to college, have dinner) by reading Buffy’s schedule.

The problem is that my grade sevens were probably not even born when Buffy premiered in North America, let alone when she made it to Spain. That means that when the struggling students that come to support classes with me on Tuesday afternoons ask about the show, I am supposed to have answers.

I suppose I am thankful for teaching notes. I now know that Sarah Michelle Gellar has a cat name Cayo and a dog named Thor. Apparently she likes pasta and her favourite colour is red. Angel is the only good vampire in the world and he likes Buffy. He works at night because the light kills vampires. Buffy doesn’t smoke.

Ugh.

I have to vent now, because in class this week I have to act like Buffy is my favourite and the neatest topic that we could ever study.

Couldn’t they have sent one of my other roommates instead?