I don't recall any horrendous incidents from high school of being forced to read anything. I've also read anything from a young age, although initially I read WWII histories. My mother always told everyone that eventually I would "graduate" from that into other topics and she was correct. I've read tons of other things so far and look forward to reading forever. I do remember writing an English paper on Hemmingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" where my thesis was that he had stolen the plans for a soviet submarine and was using the book as a code to sneak them to the western powers. I don't recall the grade I got but after reading all those other papers she did tell me it was amusing. My father was a teacher, although he taught science and biology. And I worked as a math teacher at one point. So I have some perspective on both sides of the chalk. It's not an easy row. And one of my good friends was a college English professor who regularly regaled us with stories. Although he did use many scifi/fantasy books and even films/tv shows as source material during his time teaching. I've increased my appreciation of story telling though (tabletop or face-to-face) RPGs. Granted writing an adventure is much different from a tv show, movie or novel, story-telling is in some terms even more important. And when you can shift it into a cooperative effort it gets even more inspiring. And thanks, Wil, for bringing together a group of people whose comments don't make me want to firebomb humanity (as so many comment sections do).

Hehehe, he said "forsooth" ... What we need here, is an Erector Set.