Please allow me to use this comment space to grovel at the feet of the once and always transcendent goddess, the Divine Miss M.

This kid is just lazy. The most irritating part was that he’s an English major and fancies himself a true connoisseur of literature—works at a bookstore, pretentiously and loudly hates on great popular authors (like Neil Gaiman! You know, because if people like an author they must automatically suck). He drove me…

Mostly middle- to lower-class community college students. I suspect many of them were hardly ever or never read to at all. I’ve had students proudly tell me they have never read an entire book. It sickens me.

Whaaa?!

I teach Alice in this class and also in a fiction class, and once had a student complain it was too hard to read. I was like “Bitch, you are in the wrong place if that’s too hard for you. This is college!”

Um, that sounds freaking amazing!!

Yep! We have Perrault & Grimm versions of most, along with other adaptations. I actually get the most pushback from older students who are parents, who just cannot fathom exposing their precious little angels to anything other than sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops.

Ha ha yeah, you can see why they chose a different ending. I myself was traumatized by reading The Shining in 5th grade!!

That would be awesome! A very different perspective on the tales, I'm sure.

Note: I live in the middle of Nowheresville, USA. Anti-intellectualism is rampant.

Ugh, I so feel you. I try to keep in mind the attitude I mentioned, but it gets really hard when I have to correct people for using words like “colored” and “homo”and thinking they are perfectly acceptable. This happens over and over again every semester. It is sad and infuriating, and only a small slice of the…

Yes, we usually read a few different versions of each fairytale. The chopping off of the toes is always squirm-inducing for everyone. The clotted blood in the Bluebeard story is another perennial cringe-inducer. They mostly love them, though, especially because they find them so utterly shocking.

I know! I just tell myself that obviously they're where they need to be: in college.

I teach a class on Children’s Literature, and it never fails to amaze me how pretty much all my students think that Walt Disney wrote every single fairytale. It is so fun to watch their minds get BLOWN with the fairytales unit. The biggest reactions happen with the original Bluebeard, Cinderella, and Little Mermaid.…

FWIW, my husband and I loved both seasons of Fargo.

My BIL is TWENTY-SEVEN and dresses like that for any event. He came to a cookout/bocce ball party in a bow tie, loafers, and jacket with elbow patches. He also wears a smug face as his worst accessory. When he started dating my sister, I told her he reminded of guys from my grad school. She failed to understand that…

Wait, are we sisters? Did he also wear loafers with tassles?

Yes, reminders of this tragedy will never not give me major sads. She seemed like such a lovely person.

I feel like he’s flipping the bird (at whom? 1D?) and biting it at the same time...?

That’s a terrible story, and I know the frustration of being able to do nothing. My friend’s boyfriend was like a textbook abuser; he started out name-calling, moved to pinching and slapping, and escalated into kicking her out of moving cars, punching her in the face, and who knows what else. I tried and tried to get…