contributing writer @wearemel, @ringer, & @splicetoday. seen in @theatlantic, @parisreview, &c. repped by @inkwellmgmt. co-host of @whatisleftpod 
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I had a ninth grade English teacher — a dead ringer for Mr. Feeney — who wore these exceptionally pleated pants, so pleated they gave him a pear shape. And he had an aversion to “boy feet,” so in that 1994 heyday of Tevas and Birks he’d go around doing “shoe safety checks.”
It seems strange to me now, but I accepted it as the normal course of business in those days. Roughly 10% of each lecture was devoted to “boy feet” and their grossness, which prepared me for a world in which some folks hate/fear boy feet, others fetishize them, many don’t care
He hated large feet in particular, and always knew which male students had the largest feet and not only the longest toenails but the longest nail pads, the area where the nail sits directly on the toe. Until he began expounding on that, I’d never given it any thought
Even back then, I was already missing two entire nails — there’s nothing there — and one day I was wearing some Reef sandals and the teacher took notice and began saying, “yuck yuck, Mr Pink Foot” and thereafter called me “Pinky,” a nickname that didn’t follow me out of the class
You know what? I like that. Not the substance, but the freedom he felt to be that weird. Having taught now 20+ years and seen all of the incentives push educators to disposable sameness, my reaction to weird old teacher stories is “yup, those were the days”
That's right. Whatever was going on with this dude, and he didn't actually punish anyone so people mostly ignored him, he did his own thing and the class is much easier to remember than some piece of packaged curriculum taught by a robot or a computer screen
Around that same time, I had a teacher who was anti-clogs. If girls took their clogs off in class, he would lift them with a yardstick and put them outside the window.
It was possible to be that way back then. There was likely more going on with these folks than meets the eye
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