This evening I was surprised to find a different professor in my class than the one I'd signed up for. I'd had "Mr. Smith" last semester and really enjoyed his class, so I decided to take the only other course he taught as an elective-it would be an easy A. I'd already signed up for three classes this semester but because I was familiar with his teaching style, I knew I'd be okay to take Mr. Smith's class as a fourth. But instead of Mr. Smith, there was an older gentleman behind the professor's desk, who wasn't very forthcoming with information regarding the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Smith. I didn't know anything about this new guy nor had I given him the ever important rate-my-professor-dot-com background check. Once a friend arrived, we both ditched the class. I went home disgruntled and decided to e-mail Mr. Smith and demand an explanation! Well, more or less. His wife had been expecting their first child at the end of last semester, so I said I was just checking in on the wife and baby, etc. etc. I'd save the neck wringing for another e-mail.

Still curious as to his absence at class, I decided to do some investigating. I turned to Google, the most reliable source of accurate information available to nosey, 30-somethings with too much time on their hands. I entered his name, school and county in the blank space and clicked search. Then I gasped and said a few hundred oh-my-gosh's.

Mr. Smith had been arrested a little over a week before school started for having an inappropriate relationship with a minor, one of his students whom he taught at a local high school several years earlier.

It couldn't be true, but it was true. It was definitely him-there was a mug shot to prove it. I must've clicked every link; I couldn't stop myself. It was like a train wreck and I just couldn't pull away from it. I thought about his wife. I thought about his baby. I thought about his career. I thought about his friends and the people he went to church with. I thought about his mama. It felt like a punch in the gut. Not because I held him in any particularly high esteem, but because of the fact that I trusted him to be "normal." You know, someone like one of us-the "good folk." Hard working, tax paying citizens trying to get our little piece of the American dream. Not some low-life criminal preying on the hormonal impulses of a teenage school girl hot for teach'.

Then, I thought about myself. I thought about the people I know, the people I work with. I thought about my husband, my future children and the people I go to church with. I thought about mama. Maybe what was most disturbing about this news was the abrasive reminder that I'm a Mr. Smith. We're all Mr. Smiths. We don't just have skeletons in our closet, we have vile carcasses with rotting flesh. We have rapes, robberies, drug use, drug trafficking, molestations, murders, tax evasions, white collar crimes, blue collar crimes, secret addictions, affairs, lies, scandals, the list goes on forever. I can name at least five things I've done personally that I could be arrested for, and that's just off the top of my head!

My point, if there's more of one than just venting a little, is to remind you, and more myself, that you can never really know someone. I mean, really know them. You can't judge someone against the persona you've assigned to them.

I am sorry for Mr. Smith and his family. I don't know what his plea will be, so at this point its hard to say whether he is guilty or innocent. But I know that no matter what, I respect him as a teacher. I respect him for speaking his mind, as he so often did in class. He can be a wonderful husband and father, I am sure of that. I pray for strength for his family, and for him, as he faces the challenges ahead.