Fanfiction

or, the lowest probability encounter

During my freshman year at MIT, I lived at East Campus, a dorm that housed about 400 students, and that was known for, among many other things, having a lively culture. We residents often stayed up until ungodly hours doing fuck all with their time, or just sitting around in the hallways chatting. I happened to be on 5W one day, a different floor than the one I lived on. Consequently, I didn't know many of the people there, but a group of us were in a hall clot reminiscing about high school.

Eventually we got to the topic of weird high school teachers, and some of us shared stories about teachers who were known to do drugs or watch porn in school. My school district certainly had a teacher or two with that type of reputation, and I spend a while talking about the teacher who, from my recollection, had been caught watching smut on the school network, but managed to keep his job with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. But I also mentioned that a much more harmless weird teacher I had was my freshman English teacher. He had written Twilight fanfiction, and sometimes read sections of it over the intercom in the morning during the announcements. I mentioned that it was an unusual choice of announcement, and it was probably only even okayed to be included in the announcements in the first place because that teacher was involved with the broadcasting club.

After I mentioned this to the others, one girl, whose room we were next to, asked me where I was from. I answered, giving the name of the relatively small town in Upstate NY that I was from. Without saying a word, she got up and went into her room. She came out moments later holding a book, which I initially thought (hoped) might have been her own favorite Twilight fanfiction or something. She showed it to me and I realized, face turning bright red, that she was holding my English teacher’s book. She laughed, saying, “yeah, I know my dad’s a bit of a weird teacher.”