This story originally appeared as a guest post on EduDad. I wrote an edge-of-your-seat introduction to it here, but the short version is that I penned it in 2006 when I was still a middle school English teacher, as part of a collection of true classroom tales I intended to publish and become a kajillionaire. Unfortunately, the project soon fizzled out as I moved on to another kajillion-dollar idea that also failed. However, the story remains, and it offers you, O Loyal Reader, a unique glimpse at my daily pre-Twinfamy shenanigans. Enjoy!

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Do You Like Pie?

In an über-rare moment, my seventh-graders were actually working diligently on an assignment, so after a quick, discreet touchdown dance, I’d sprinted to my computer to capitalize on the situation, starting to finally enter the piles of grading cluttering my desk.

Just as I was getting into a groove, the classroom door opened and a student from one of my other classes meandered up to my desk.

“Do you like pie?” she asked.

My mind still in data-entry mode, I was dumbfounded. “What?” I replied.

“Do you like pie? Like, the dessert?”

“Um, yeah. I do. Why?”

“Want a free pie?”

“Okay…sure…I would like a free pie.” I just had to see where this was going.

She then handed me a Marie Callender’s coupon–good for one free pie–and said, “I won it in a pie-eating contest and I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like pie.”

At this point, the rest of the class had looked up from their assignments, and were just as intrigued as I was.

“You—you don’t like pie?” I stammered, utterly baffled.

“No, not really.”

“But you were in a pie-eating contest.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So you entered a pie-eating contest…and ate more pie than anybody there…but you don’t like pie.”

She smiled. “That’s right.”

I shared a look with the rest of my class and then asked the question burned into everyone’s mind…

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I just wanted to win.”

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If not, you probably don’t like pie either, which means there is no hope for you.