Do you have a short story you read in school that you still think about?
There are some stories they teach in school that stay with you. Not necessarily because they’re the best thing ever written but because they are so messed up that you just think about it for years after it. Those short stories haunt us.
One X user (emdashklatt) tweeted “I can’t wait to become a high school English teacher and assign my students a short story so unsettling that it will haunt them for the rest of their lives” and the best part about that tweet is that everyone has a different story that they think about.
For some reason, when we all get to high school, teachers decide it is time to read absolutely unhinged stories in class. Not everyone reads the same stories, especially when it comes to short stories, and that means that we all collectively have different things that have stuck with us.
For me, there are two: “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Of the two, “The Most Dangerous Game” is a bit more well-known because people often reference it and I feel as if we all collectively had an experience with it. Every time someone is hunted for sport in a movie or a television show, we all start bringing it up.
The other short story that I think about all the time is “A Rose for Emily.” The Faulkner story is not exactly the happiest. Mainly because it results in a woman sleeping in bed with a dead body but hey, this is what we’re being taught in school. From what I recall, Emily loved a man so much that she kills Homer and lays in bed with him because that’s the way he’ll love her. Morbid!
Did I read both of these during my freshmen year of high school? Yes. Have I brought them up constantly for the last nearly 20 years? Yes. Sometimes, stories just stick in your brain so what short story did you have to read that you can’t stop thinking about?
(featured image: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
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