Each week, the Record (using a script in R) randomly selects a student at the College for our One in Two Thousand feature, excluding current Record board members. This week, Teanna Bucci ’26.5 spoke about pranks, limericks, and the supernatural. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Henry Hilton (HH): You say you hate small talk. Why?
Teanna Bucci (TB): I don’t like wasting time. I don’t care about the weather. I went outside today. I know what the weather’s like. I think there’s many more interesting questions you can ask that open much bigger conversations besides “Oh, how’s the week going?” Ask me something more like, I don’t know, “What’s really grinding your gears today?”
HH: What’s really grinding your gears today?
TB: I wish people in my classes were more emotional about the things that we discuss. I don’t believe in theorizing about solving problems. I think you need to actually solve the problem. And to do that, you need to have a very human approach. AI could do all the things that they’re doing.
HH: Do you believe in ghosts?
TB: Yes. My house was haunted when I was a kid. I lived in front of a graveyard and behind a graveyard. They used to take dirt from my yard to bury people if they didn’t have enough. I live in a “shotgun house.” All of the doors in the house are in a line, so if you shot a shotgun through the window, and the window was open, and all these doors were open, the shot wouldn’t hit anything. It would go straight through the house. One time, I was in my room, and I swear to God [a ghost wearing] my nightgown went through all the doors from one side of the house to the other.
HH: Have you had any other supernatural encounters?
TB: No, but I experience a lot of really strange things that I can’t really explain. Animals are really attracted to me for some reason. The deer love me. I live in Garfield, and there’s a whole lot of them back there. I go outside a lot at night and I walk around. I usually have my headphones in, so I guess my energy is really calm for them. But they appear around me in groups of like five, 10, never more than 12.
HH: What do you find other than animals on your nightly walks?
TB: I find acorns, construction signs, traffic cones, really big leaves, people sometimes.
HH: What do you find on a more philosophical level?
TB: The strength to walk into tomorrow. And I also find resolve or peace with the things that didn’t make sense to me during the day. At night, for some reason, they become clear.
HH: Are there any epiphanies that have come to you recently?
TB: Yeah, actually, this week has been really transformative for me. Everything makes sense, even the things that don’t make sense. Like, I know exactly why I’m here at 2:02 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 16 with you doing this interview. I know exactly why I’m in Williamstown right now. I know exactly why I’m going to school. I know why I’m studying the things that I study.
HH: Tell me of these answers you hold.
TB: I’ve spent a lot of my life just trying to make it from morning to night, and recently that’s changed, and I now have goals and plans that don’t just include survival. I actually have things that I’m excited for, even if they’re not here yet.
HH: What are these goals? What are you excited for?
TB: This summer, hopefully, I’ll be in Chicago or Austin, [Texas], doing a script development internship. It’s satisfying to know that writing doesn’t just have to be an after-school activity. It can be mine.
HH: When did you start writing?
TB: Well, I got my first diary when I was, like, eight years old. I was in third grade. It was a Monster High diary. It was divided up into five sections, and the pages were different colors, according to the characters. I didn’t make it past, like, the third section.
HH: What’s a theme that you keep finding yourself coming back to in writing?
TB: Perversion. I really hate normal things. I hate the concept of normal. I hate the idea of ordinary and regular and acceptable because I think everything has the same capacity to be perverse and abnormal. I usually write about people that have really strange interests or they have really strange ways of expressing themselves or really strange hobbies. Usually women, because men are allowed to be gross and weird — you know the world we live in.
HH: What’s a good prank you’ve pulled?
TB: I don’t know if it’s a prank, but I’ve signed a couple people up for the Church of Scientology. Like, with their phone number and stuff, and now they won’t stop getting calls. It’s funny.
HH: When did you start thinking you were funny?
TB: I still don’t think I’m funny. Other people think I’m funny.
HH: Well, tell me a joke, then.
TB: [In a British accent] I can tell you a little limerick. There once was a young gal named Jill who used a stick of dynamite for a thrill. They found a vagina in North Carolina and bits of her tits in Brazil.
HH: Why did you say that in a British accent?
TB: Limericks are British. It sounds better in an accent like that.
HH: You like doing accents. When did you start doing them?
TB: I think I’ve always done them. I was in third grade, and I wanted to be British really badly.
HH: Now you are basically fluent in Italian. When did this interest start?
TB: I have Italian origins on my mom’s side, and my mom always wanted to go to Italy. So I’ve always wanted to go to Italy. I’ve said since I was a kid, when I go to college, if I go, I’ll go to Italy.
HH: When you went abroad to Rome, would you say most people there were impressed by your Italian?
TB: Yeah.
