Please Listen

We - your history students - are teenagers. We have notoriously short attention spans and a penchant for purposely finding things to distract us. But we could probably find it in our hearts to pay attention in your class every day, except for one little thing. Those sweaters? They are about to drive us insane.

Please, don't take offense. I know this is probably a touchy subject. But I've got to say something, and if I don't get it out, I'm likely to go mad. Those damn sweaters of yours are bugging the hell out of me. I know you might actually like those "sweatervests of invincibility," as the science teacher calls them, but I would really appreciate it if you would listen to me. I have genuine reasons for asking you this; I swear to you that I'm not trying to play Fashion Police.

You see, you wear these same sweaters pretty much every day, as I'm sure you realize. The argyle patterns are very distracting. I know some kids, myself included, who find it difficult to concentrate on anything you say when your shirt is louder than you are. If you wore something less distracting, it's likely that your pupils would get better grades, and our pupils wouldn't hurt so much from looking at you. We would be able to focus on your lectures. More than one friend of mine has complained about feeling the uncontrollable urge to doodle the patterns on your shirts on the margins of worksheets.

You could get a lot more respect if you wore something normal, too. I hate to break it to you, but those sweaters are the subject of more than just a few bad jokes around the school. And when somebody makes fun of your clothes, they're indirectly making fun of you too.

When you get all pissed off over something like getting phone calls in the middle of class or kids walking in late and go off on an angry rant, it's quite funny. We can't take you seriously when you're wearing an...ahem..."extensively patterned sweater" (that was a quote from the math teacher, by the way) that match your red face perfectly.

There are a few things you could say right now: you love those sweaters, clothes are just too expensive to go buy a whole new wardrobe just because one kid complained, or maybe that with the Minnesota winter, they're too warm to give up. Fair enough. Just please wear something else sometimes, like whenever you want us to pay attention, for example.

I know there are tons of reasons for you to get mad at me and give me detention or something. I admit, I might have been a little rude about it, but I am honestly concerned for my friends' sake, and for my own. If we fail your class, or even do less than our very best, it shouldn't be because of something as stupid as those ugly sweaters, should it?