By Timur Markowitz:
SUTHERLAND HIGH SCHOOL – Tuesday Morning during homeroom, English teacher, Jeffrey Haans was thirty minutes into lecturing his class about his recent divorce when he looked around and realized that nobody cared. He began the class by explaining how
the existentialist angst felt by the characters in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five related to his life as a result of his divorce. The English teacher, definitely an alcoholic, had been discussing his divorce since the students walked into class on the first day of school, but the students could already tell he was recently single based on his dress sense, including cracked glasses, a headband, shaving cream by his ears, and a singular earring, trying to emulate Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, and Fonzie from Happy Days. After he ranted about his divorce, he continued on: bringing up his estranged sister and explaining how “chill” and “accepting” he was about his disappointing life before falling into a fit of laughter, most likely hiding his tears. Jerry, a student in the class, said “Overall, it definitely was one of my better birthdays.”
However, on this more recent day, the English teacher looked up while complaining to see all of his AP Literature students on their school registered iPads – most students typing uninformed sex jokes on Discord. After seeing his students ignoring him, the 42 year old English teacher who was currently living out of a van as a result of a restraining order his wife recently filed, stopped midway through his sentence, and proceeded to exit the classroom for a moment. His students then gave a sigh of relief, and proceeded to make sex jokes through Discord concerning the English teacher, who at this point was sobbing in the bathroom. Once the teacher returned, he sat at his desk and put on a Bill Nye episode for his AP Literature class. Tears silently rolled down his face as the class members sang the Bill Nye theme song at the top of their lungs.