Do you remember what it was like when you discovered that Santa Claus wasn't real, and that your parents, good intentions or not, had pulled off (what seemed at the time like) the greatest lie ever perpetuated? Well this is approximately ten million times more scarring: a NJ elementary school teacher who told her students she was friends with Lady Gaga, and promised they could meet her, broke their little hearts with a Gaga impersonator when she couldn't get the real deal. “People started like crying,” student Sabrina Sadler told CBS.
The unnamed teacher at Maugham Elementary told her students that she had become friends with Lady Gaga when they were both interns at MTV. “She said after the NJ ASK, which is a big test at our school, she would bring in a surprise for us. And we didn’t know what it was. And then after the NJ ASK she told us it was going to be Lady Gaga,” student Ally Waldman said.
Last Wednesday, the teacher brought the student to the school library for a video chat with Lady Gaga (she also had already autographed pictures for them). “It was so exciting when we saw that picture and she was smiling at us,” Waldman said. But when Gaga only typed answers, and never spoke, student became suspicious: “At first I thought it was really weird because she had glasses on. And they said her microphone was disabled,” fourth grader Michael Ranaldi said.
In the end, the teacher couldn't keep her pokerface: school administrators informed parents on Friday that the woman online turned out to be an impostor. Ally Walderman tore up her fake autographed photo, and lamented: “It’s not fair because, like, she lied to us." Parents were disappointed by the ruse, while Randaldi doggone angry: “I would be disappointed if we didn’t get to meet her and she just told us, but now I feel betrayed and just three times worse." School administrators said they are taking this matter very seriously and the teacher may be punished...or not.
Hopefully the kids won't get the ruthless Fake Gaga Hunters involved in the case. There is one possibility none of us have considered though: what if the real Lady Gaga is in fact herself also a fake Gaga??
