WTF?

What the fuck?

In more genteel circles, people say, “What in the world–?”

Or, “Oh, my heavens!”

Or, “Good grief!”

Or, “You must be kidding me!”

Once upon a time, in my former life as a college English professor, I was part of a small group that had little, framed signs that read WTFIT?*

It was the kind of response one might give when offered an essay that contents of which were a first person account of the sex tourist trade in Thailand by a student who’d never left the state of North Carolina and whole stole said account from the internet. Or the kind of response you might be left with upon having a narrative essay turned in for workshop that recounts an evening where, drunk off his ass, the author returned home, took some drugs, got up, said, “Fuck it,” snuck out without his pants, thinking “Fuck it, I’m going to go find my friends and return to partying,” was arrested for DWI, thinking, “Oh, fuck!”, ended up in jail in his boxers, and then quotes another inmate as saying to the guards, “Suck my no-no spot,” because, the author says sheepishly, he didn’t want to be offensive.

WTFIT? *

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*What The Fuck Is That?