April 11th, 2013Top StoryNot-Fucking Your Professor, Confronting a Nibble-Nabble Bandit, and Other Questionable AdviceBy Caity Weaver
I am a student in college and I have THE biggest crush on one of my teachers. We are close in age, have similar interests, and we are both married. He is so smart and sexy that I have a hard time concentrating in class. The sexual chemistry between us is palpable and I split my time in class between eye fucking him and doodling hearts on my papers. I don't want to cross a line physically but I do want to let him know how I feel (even though I'm pretty sure he knows). Our time together is quickly coming to an end and before it does, all I want to do is give him a note on our final day. I want to write something like " I daydream of us drinking tea, watching Jeopardy, and then making love all night long". I know my fantasy involves Jeopardy, which I'm positive is not okay, but what about divulging my true and naughty feelings for my teacher? Is that okay Thatz not okay. What are your "similar interests"? Being married? College classrooms? You're a Comm major and he's a Comm professor, so: Comm? In the situation you propose, you are putting both this guy's personal and professional lives in jeopardy (and not the pre-coital game show you watch in your fantasy), while explicitly saying you DON'T want to really have sex with him. That's not doing him a favor. In fact, getting your note will probably ruin his day. (Unless he's totally sleazy, in which case, why would you want to want to have sex with him?) For one thing, it will likely read as a blatant attempt to seduce him in order to secure a higher grade. And it sounds like, from your poor note taking skills ("I split my time in class between eye fucking him and doodling hearts on my papers"), you would benefit from some sextra credit. (By the way—heart doodling? You sound like an insane temptress who is also in the third grade. Good luck prepping for your states and capitals final exam. Which is the capital of Kentucky: Louisville or Lexington? Trick question! It's Frankfort. Study up.) Have you thought about how it would unfold if you did go through with your plan? Can you actually envision yourself walking to the front of the classroom and handing your professor this folded up note, the outside of which has been labeled "TOP SECRET" in a confident, crayoned hand? Would you tell him not to read it until you'd left the room? Would you stand there while he read it? Even in an ideal scenario (which, I guess, is one in which he likes you back, despite the lack of evidence you have presented?), what's he supposed to do with that information? Have sex with you? You've already taken that off the table. Not have sex with you? He could have done that without the note. There is no context in which it is ever in everyone's best interests to tell someone "I want to sleep with you, but I'm not going to." You wanna do something nice for your professor? Do your very best on your final exam. Write him a stellar course evaluation. Give him a mini bottle of hand sanitizer and a package of gourmet hot cocoa you bought from Marshalls. Those are the kinds of gifs teachers love. As an aside, from an outside perspective, it seems like you might be more enamored with the idea of being a "naughty" student who has a fling with a "smart and sexy" professor than with the actual gentleman who, at home, is probably just a normal guy, not unlike the one you married. Maybe organize a student/teacher role-play scenario with your husband? It's spring, which means the winter plaids are now on sale. Buy yourself a skirt after your final class. If, after all this, you are still convinced that you would like to pursue an affair—even just an emotional affair—with this married man, there are far better ways to initiate it. But we won't go into them now because affairz are not okay. My friend and I are close, and I like her boyfriend, but we don't hang out all the time. I went to meet my friend and her boyfriend after work, at a bar. They had eaten dinner, but I hadn't, so I ordered a burger and fries. I'll spare you the details, but essentially, I waited half an hour for my meal and I was very hungry when it finally arrived. My hunger and the wait was common knowledge between me, my friend, and her man. As I put the burger in my mouth for the first glorious bite, my friend's boyfriend took a fry, without asking. Furious, I told him THATZ NOT OK, and that I would have shared with him if he had asked. I insisted he owed me an apology. He said fry-snatching WAZ OK, and neither apologized nor amended the situation by like, buying me a beer or something. Is that ok? Thatz okay. First of all—
NO, SPARE NO DETAIL. THAT ANECDOTE SOUNDS FASCINATING. If one fry is the difference between you living and dying, you've got bigger problems than a friend exhibiting poor table manners. You are severely undernourished. You need to set-up a PayPal account so that we can transfer money to you. You need to ask Sarah McLachlan to write a sad song about you, so we can play it over a slow-mo video of you reaching for a single fry just as a waiter swoops in and takes the plate away. Here's a revised power ranking of the worst misdeeds in human history, to reflect that situation:
Otherwise, it was impolite of your friend's boyfriend to grab a fry from your plate without asking. (It's not impolite because you were hungry; it's impolite because you shouldn't dig into another person's plate without their permission—unless it's your mom, haha, sorry Mom, shouldn't have had kids, I guess!) However, it was also impolite of you not to toss off a cursory "Feel free to take a fry, guys!" before digging into your hamburger if you were the only person with food. While it is not technically impolite of you to now actively campaign for a retroactive apology through an independent arbitration hearing, it does feel a little like overkill. As for fair dues, it's not clear to me where, in your mind, the price of a fry becomes equivalent to the price of a beer. You were absolutely entitled to a sip of his beer, if he had one. He also could have offered you payment in the form of a ha'penny. But there is not a restaurant on Earth where a glass of beer and a single French fry are listed on the menu for an identical price. While we're setting arbitrarily high reparation rates, why didn't your friend's boyfriend buy you a whole new plate of burger and fries to make up for the one he stole? Why didn't he buy you a car? And didn't you feel like a Dickensian landlord as you quibbled with your foodless friends—your mouth shiny with burger grease, your fingers speckled with stray crystal grains of salt from all the fries you did get to eat—over a single fry? (I know that they had already eaten by the time you arrived, but, in that moment, you were the one with all the food. They were the ones watching you eat all the food.) As a rule, I would advise against becoming the friend who keeps a thorough record of all bites given and snacks shared during communal meals. At best (if you keep your observations to yourself), you'll only be getting yourself worked up about it. At worst (if you find yourself regularly saying things like "Last month you took a French fry from me and gave me nothing in return"), you'll look nasty, obsessive, and stingy. How can you be stingy when the food you're not sharing is food YOU paid for? I know. It's crazy. Western restaurant etiquette is confusing. Money is a social construct. One day we'll all be dead and it won't matter who ate the most fries, although I hope it's you because you love them. Until then, try to pass the time pleasantly. Do not start fights over a French fry. Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions (max: 200 words) here. Photo via Tommaso Lizzul/Shutterstock.  |
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