A bewildering series of events has just taken place at Oak Ridge Middle School that has students scratching their heads and searching for answers: Ms. Elliot’s history class just ended without her ever acknowledging the Mark Twain impersonator quietly sitting at her desk.
What was he there for? This is truly confounding.
Upon arriving to class at the start of the period and seeing a middle-aged man sporting a spot-on Mark Twain costume sitting in the corner of the classroom, students in Ms. Elliot’s class fully expected an interactive lesson on The Gilded Age or 19th-century American literature. But as Ms. Elliot got further and further into her lecture on the Space Race without so much as looking at the man dressed as Mark Twain as he quietly sat at her desk thumbing through a copy of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, a cloud of mystery arose over the purpose of this man’s visit.
“At no point in the lesson did Ms. Elliot refer to Mark Twain or acknowledge that guy in any way. He just sat there going over some flash cards and occasionally checking his phone, but he never said a word,” reported eighth-grader Elina Hernandez on her way out of the confusing third-period class. “The guy had a fishing pole and an old typewriter with him, but Ms. Elliot never had him talk or introduce himself or anything. Why was he even there?”
At one point during Ms. Elliot’s lecture on 1960s space exploration, the Mark Twain impersonator reportedly muttered “fascinating” to himself in a gruff, 19th-century accent while stroking his long mustache, prompting Zach Olsen to finally ask the old man who he was, but he simply replied, “Why, Mark Twain of course!” and winked slyly to the class. According to several eyewitnesses, Ms. Elliot’s only reaction to this was to shush the class and return to her lesson.
Utterly baffling. For now, there doesn’t appear to be a clear motive to this mysterious and seemingly pointless visit from the Mark Twain impersonator. As it stands, students at Oak Ridge Middle are likely to be stewing over this mystery for years to come.
