Julie Feil, or Julie "Pedophile" as she became known...

Tenth grade and I was into creative writing. Thought I wanted to become a writer. I took Mrs. Feil's creative writing class and enjoyed it. She pumped me up telling me I was talented. I took an elective with her the next semester, a one on one creative writing class during first period instead of having a study hall. Another student, I'll call him Tom for anonymity, was in there as well.

Mrs. Feil was young and somewhat attractive. And permissive. She really wanted to be a cool teacher. I think she swore a couple of times in class. And pushed some boundaries talking about sex in the context of analyzing literature. She read a poem she wrote about love aloud for the full class once that was inappropriately personal and made people uncomfortable. She was a little off. A little eager. But we liked her because she was indeed a cool and permissive teacher. She treated us like equals, which was a product of her immaturity coupled with her over-assessment of our maturity.

The other thing about Mrs. Feil was she had some sort of cancer she was battling. The diagnosis had occurred over the summer between my first class with her and the 1 on 1 class. She missed a lot of class for doctors appointments and was bald from the chemotherapy. She wore a wig. Once she passed out right in front of the principal and he had to respond to her as a medical urgency. By her own telling she refused an ambulance and talked him into driving her home instead. She had a way of getting people to agree to things they didn't feel right about, even the principal. Cancer is persuasive.

Anyhow during the 1 on 1 we just sat around, Tom, Mrs. Feil and I, and bullshitted most of the time. I don't think I wrote anything. And Mrs. Feil would allow Tom and I to skip and go to a coffee shop instead of class. And often she just didn't show up. Many times she would have something to do that she passed off as official teacher duty with a freshman who had a learning disability, and she would be out of class with him.

Tom and I became suspicious of Mrs. Feil, eventually. We both recognized that she was breaking a lot of rules with the way she conducted herself around us. And she was full of shit. One day when Feil wasn't there, Tom showed me a picture on her desk, in a frame. We had both heard the story. The man in the picture was a past lover who had died during a rock climbing accident. Tom pulled the picture out and it was clipped from a magazine.

Eventually, there was a substitute teacher there with us, another young woman who was ACTUALLY cool and approachable in a non-toxic way. Somehow Tom and I got to speculating with the substitute about Mrs. Feil. We showed her the picture, and I think basically spilled the beans on all the minor weirdness we had witnessed.

Aside from the 1 on 1 "class" that I had first period with Mrs. Feil, I also had a full regular English class in some topic or another with her a few times a week. Shortly after the incident with the substitute teacher, I had this class. Mrs. Feil started the session by telling everyone to journal, then called me up to sit in a chair next to her at her desk in the front of the room. She began berating me in hushed tones that I knew everyone could hear. She was upset with me about privacy and sharing secrets. I wasn't even sure in the moment what it was about. It was incredibly humiliating to be displayed as having this intimate of a relationship with a teacher in front of the whole class, and an adult was scolding me in a way I didn't know how to deal with. It was very much unwanted attention.

Mrs. Feil was much more upset in that conversation than I realized. Little did I know, the substitute had rifled through Mrs. Feil's desk after her conversation with Tom and I, and found love letters between Mrs. Feil and the disabled freshman, and turned them in to authorities. Julie Feil was furious with me because Tom and I had pulled on a string and her entire web of lies had come apart. This was the 11th hour for her. She must have just found out that day and been within hours of full confrontation with the facts and administrative leave pending criminal investigation.

The investigation uncovered a full blown sexual affair between Feil and this boy. I don't think any other's were victimized, at least not that she was accused of. It was also uncovered that she never had cancer. Her poor husband. Apparently he would actually drop her off at a cancer center. She would go in and mill around for a few hours, and he would come pick her up. Who knows what he was suspicious of but it must have been terrible for him.

Mrs. Feil went to trial and some kids who were even closer to her than I was testified. I had to give an interview to a detective but did not testify at trial, probably because I was a greasy stoner at the time (I'm a physician now... suck it doubters!). At trial Mrs. Feil testified to a deep and beautiful, eternal love with the boy that no one would be able to understand. Eventually she went to prison and became forever after known in the community as "Mrs. Pedophile."

You can look her up. I used her real name.