Audiobook YA Paranormal
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
I'm getting to know Mr Taft's office pretty well. The way it smells like a musty closet, the way the motivational posters hang, just a little off balance on every wall, the way his wife and twin suns shine their happy faces through a silver picture frame. The chairs in his office are just a bit more comfortable than in the waiting room equipped with a layer of padding from 1983 or so looking around his office, the only real difference between this visit and my previous visits there is that my dad's sitting next to me. It's not a matter of who's right or wrong. Abby Dad says after listening to Mr Taft side of the story, it's about respect for the teacher. Dad. I say patiently, it's not like I can just respect someone who asks the class to believe a load of **** like that, my response and perhaps that one word in particular seems to have a physical effect on my dad and Mr Taft. Abigail Mr Richer is an expert in history. Just like we talked about last week, how Mrs Old Wharf is an expert in physics. Oh God, don't get me started on her again. Abby! My dad says, this is very serious, please take this seriously. Dad has that look in his eyes, looking through the tops of his eyes, that same look that he would give me when I'd have a friend's sleepover and when we were being too loud, too late in the night, I try to explain it to them. I try to explain how every october some class ends up discussing Salem and the Witch hunt. Sometimes it's an english class, sometimes it's a history class, but every year some teacher decides to educate the students about witches. This time it was Mr Richer. He talked about the hearings, the swimming of the suspects, the hanging of the condemned, the tragic circumstance brought on by ignorance and fear. Of course, most. Which law comes from age and class discrimination. Mr Richard told the class something happens that can't be explained and they blame it on someone who fits the classic description. The witch hunts really represent the xenophobia and paranoia of a society immersed in ignorance. Superstition, the idea of the which was a convenient scapegoat for so many of the society's shortcomings and what he's doing there is striking down thousands of years of tradition. He might be right about xenophobia and paranoia and all of that. But he's telling the class right before my eyes that the very idea of a witch is concocted from the same material as dragons and unicorns. He's planting the idea that it's all just an old wives tale or something like witches don't matter in many ways. This type of education is worse than a witch hunt at least. Witch hunts verify the existence of a counter belief system and how can dad sit there in this office and act like that's not important. I really worry about how much he's changed sometimes and I let him have it. I tell my dad in the counselor's office, I told him what he was doing, how he was striking down a way of life, a religion thousands of years older than the dominant ones of today. With a simple lesson about paranoia meant to serve as a Halloween story and how did the other students react to this? Mr Taft says I guess his point is that the other students didn't appreciate my passionate interruption like they were there to learn and I was ruining it for everyone or something. They laughed. I say for whatever reason speaking your mind in class always seems laughable. Mr Richard got mad and I said a few more things I guess were disrespectful and there was more laughter and finally they called me a witch. Like that was supposed to be a bad thing and there was more laughing and there was more yelling on Mr Richards part. You know how these things go. A dead end. A dead end says Mr Taft. So what did you feel like you gained from this? I think about the question for a second. They both look at me like there's some kind of lesson here that I should be receptive to. They look at me with expectation like I'm going to come to some kind of realization that being laughed at me the whole thing not worth it. I learned that I should speak my mind no matter what the consequence by the looks of their falling faces. I learned the wrong lesson.