To the Editor:

Who wrote the Jan. 25, 2021 column on Robert M. Coates’s “‘The Hour After Westerly’:  A ‘road not taken’ — or was it?”

My high school also read Mr. Coates. I thought the teacher had us read the story because so many of my classmates’ parents had marriages that were imploding and she was trying to help us make sense of it.

I had to write an essay on Mr. Coates’s work. I remember writing that I felt a lot of middle-aged men staring at me in the high school gymnasium while cheerleading and I felt sorry for them because I would not have dated them in high school either.

My essay was about stay in your lane. My teacher gave me an A for making her laugh.

So, thank you for printing the column and making me laugh. 

I am at the far end of middle age now, watching my peers, remembering Robert M. Coates, and laughing.  It's still funny.  

Christine Duffy

Guilderland

Editor’s note: Michael Nardacci, the Enterprise geology columnist, has a Ph.D. in English and, during the pandemic, has been writing a series of columns on short stories he wishes he had written.