DocAndersen
My first job out of college was as a school teacher. I loved being a teacher (ok technology called me, but at the time, I was also and still love being around kids)! I was a single person when I first started teaching. I started off working with a couple of master teachers who had more than 30 years of experience. They told me that first day, no matter what you do never let the kids come in from recess wild. I figured that out that very first day. The other thing I figured out, as the only male teacher, my name was always on the who is going outside for recess as the teacher supervising the playground. Everyone else was usually busy (although many times my co-teachers came out with me).
I started telling the kids in my class stories. For a while, I alternated a story and reading a book to clam down the post recess insanity. It was during that very first year as a teacher that I started telling Fred and Ed stories. They are a mix of the traditional cautionary tale. But they are also stories that I told about twins. I had no experience with twins when I started telling Fred and Ed Stories. I had met twins but had only met them. I had no real-life experience with twins. I told those stories for seven years. When my then new wife and I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, I stopped telling those stories. A former student reached out to me by email and asked me to record some of the stories.
I started recording some of the old Fred and Ed stories and sharing them on my podcast. The difference was now I had actual twin experience to sprinkle into the stories. On my podcast and the old Virily post shared below, I told many different Fred and Ed Stories. Some of them were the originals shared with my students (and several of my former students have shared the stories with their children). Some of the stories, though, are new. New in the sense that I didn’t share them with my class all those years ago. New in the sense that they happened to me. I don’t question fate, but it does make me wonder how and where the original stories came to me.
Link to an old Fred and Ed post, and my most current Fred and Ed story:
https://virily.com/entertainment/new-fred-ed-story/
https://docandersen.podbean.com/e/a-new-fred-and-ed-christmas-story/
http://docandersen.podbean.com
