Another year about halfway finished for the high school English teacher. Another conservative parent group forbidding their district from allowing the school to have the students read a certain overly sexual novel despite its literary significance. Another grey hair on that English teacher's head. It wasn't enough that at age 40 he was as many pounds overweight, single and with no dating prospects. He was living on such modest means that attracting a woman would be a real long shot even if she was able to find herself physically attracted to him. At least the students did like him, he had a great sense of humor, was lenient on grading and often let the class watch a movie instead of doing an assignment that would just bore them. Not that any of them would actually flirt with him, or compliment him on anything to his face.
Norman Billings had been teaching for nearly 15 years now, and would have to do something very untoward in order to get fired, so he was at least secure in his job. Sure, the young girls were amazingly tempting, they developed so early on now, many of them really filling out their bras, and of course wearing ridiculously revealing clothing as though there was nothing worth covering. He even saw tattoos on some of the girls that were too young to legally have them, and piercings in places he wouldn't allow himself to get even if he was paid handsomely. He didn't judge them, though, he knew he was from a different generation. They all performed well enough in class anyway, it wasn't as though they were entirely undisciplined. None of the other teachers seemed to care enough to remark on it, so why harp on it anyhow?
He did wear his own dark brown hair long, a remnant of his own wild days that no one had yet made fun of him for, so he saw no reason to cut it, keeping it in a ponytail nearly halfway down his back. The gray was mostly concentrated in the center of the ponytail, luckily, so his age didn't show too much yet; but the somewhat unflattering glasses framing his pale blue eyes weren't a great help to enhance his looks. All of the female teachers and staff were either married or in relationships so even having just a work companion to share a romance with was out of the question, not that any of them would likely find him appealing in that way. It just seemed like bad luck had followed him since he turned 30. So he kept mostly to himself, staying in his classroom office during breaks rather than going to the teachers' lounge. No one really expected him to go anywhere other than the restroom between classes, so anyone talking about him would never suspect him to be just around a corner, especially in an area far from his classroom, where few people congregated. But he felt like taking a little walk one lunch period, and overheard something that would come to change his life forever.
Norman Billings had been teaching for nearly 15 years now, and would have to do something very untoward in order to get fired, so he was at least secure in his job. Sure, the young girls were amazingly tempting, they developed so early on now, many of them really filling out their bras, and of course wearing ridiculously revealing clothing as though there was nothing worth covering. He even saw tattoos on some of the girls that were too young to legally have them, and piercings in places he wouldn't allow himself to get even if he was paid handsomely. He didn't judge them, though, he knew he was from a different generation. They all performed well enough in class anyway, it wasn't as though they were entirely undisciplined. None of the other teachers seemed to care enough to remark on it, so why harp on it anyhow?
He did wear his own dark brown hair long, a remnant of his own wild days that no one had yet made fun of him for, so he saw no reason to cut it, keeping it in a ponytail nearly halfway down his back. The gray was mostly concentrated in the center of the ponytail, luckily, so his age didn't show too much yet; but the somewhat unflattering glasses framing his pale blue eyes weren't a great help to enhance his looks. All of the female teachers and staff were either married or in relationships so even having just a work companion to share a romance with was out of the question, not that any of them would likely find him appealing in that way. It just seemed like bad luck had followed him since he turned 30. So he kept mostly to himself, staying in his classroom office during breaks rather than going to the teachers' lounge. No one really expected him to go anywhere other than the restroom between classes, so anyone talking about him would never suspect him to be just around a corner, especially in an area far from his classroom, where few people congregated. But he felt like taking a little walk one lunch period, and overheard something that would come to change his life forever.