A Thousand Twangling Instruments

Two students of mine came to my office hours yesterday and began to pepper me with strange high school newspaper interview questions: "Who is your hero?" "Do you have any secret talents?" "How many pairs of shoes do you own?" Things like that. Ordinarily, I would have told them to direct all personal questions to my lawyer/PR person, but these being two students that I like -- kind of arts-oriented, smart, hippy-ish dudes -- I first asked them what the hell they were doing. "We can't tell you," they told me. Is this for a website thing, or are you taking a journalism class? "No." Will a lot of people hear the answers to these questions? Sly looks at each other. "Maybe, but not in a bad way." You're not going to ridicule me somehow or make me look like an asshole in public? "No... nothing bad is going to happen." So I answered their questions, except for the hero one, which utterly stumped me. After they got to the end of their half-assed list ("If you could make or abolish any three laws, what would they be?" "Do you have any hobbies?" "What kind of music do you like?"), they started talking about the band they were forming ("kind of a punk/ska/reggae-style thing"), and asked me if I knew any drummers. No, I don't know any drummers. But I did, suddenly, figure out what was up with all the questions. They are writing a "Punk/Ska/Reggae-style" song about me. They confirmed, blushing, that this was the case, and that all they had so far was the chorus, which they sang for me in ridiculous off-key hippy dude fashion: "Truewit, whoa ohhh... Truewit, whoa ohhhh..." Cute and petrifying simultaneously. The reggae part is especially petrifying. I think I could handle a three chord rock song, but if there's a space jam in the middle of "Truewit, whoa ohhh," I'm going to be very upset.