(Maybe I Was Wrong When I Said) School Sucks (Or Maybe I Was Really Right): Episode 3 (Introducing My Physed Teacher Esmeralda Lay‪)‬

Conor Puck was a well-mannered, well-behaved, and, well, well-endowed 18-year-old stranger in a strange land, and a strange school: Florence Nightingale High School in Serenity Springs, an aptly-named small town in Western New York. It was midway through Conor’s senior year and not knowing anyone or any of the local do’s and don’ts was making for an even harder than expected transition. As it turned out, and much to Conor’s consternation, he wasn’t the social chameleon he believed himself to be. Even, at times, wishing he never came to this new place and this new school.

So, was it really all that surprising when Conor’s very sweet and very well-meaning, and alarmingly young English teacher Giulia Moss gave him an assignment to write about how he truly felt, about life, and where he was, and how he was living, insisting he be brutally honest, and to pull no punches, that he turned in a paper entitled: School Sucks? Sure, it might have been a gross over-simplification of his life, given how s****y his life had always been, right up until this point, quite independent of this new place or new school, but nonetheless, Miss Moss was moved, and a tad flabbergasted, by Conor’s arresting, calculating, venomous piece. So much so, in fact, she felt compelled, even obligated, to share it with the rest of the faculty at FNHS.

After all, in today’s society, you can never be too careful about these things.

And so, once Conor’s piece was passed around, all around the predominately all-female faculty at FNHS, even in and out of the hands of the vice principal Lillian Mills, who happened to be Conor’s Godmother, with whom he lived, after the initial hurt and hard feelings, they were all almost immediately given over to the solitary notion, an almost collectively, self-imposed mission, to utterly convince this young stranger in a strange land, that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong about school, especially their beloved FNHS, or, as it just so happens, maybe he was really right.