Oliver Bateman Does the WorkVerified account

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

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”