Okay, let's get one thing straight: Shakespeare was awesome. Like, "stole a theater because he was petty" awesome. (True story). Shakespeare was vulgar, hilarious, sarcastic, more than likely bisexual, and most of all: he was a common man.

So why do we teach and talk about him as if he's some sort of unreachable elite?

In short: because the Early Modern English (no, not old English) is different and "fancier" than the language we use today. And because he was a genius, of course, but he was a genius because he was just a regular guy. For some reason, we don't allow ourselves to see him as brilliant and normal.

The reality is Shakespeare wrote about people. He wrote about realistic characters with hopes, dreams, and vices his audience could relate to then and still can relate to now. He wrote about love, heartache, adventure, greed, jealousy, real feelings. Sure, maybe we can't relate to fairies hijacking our love lives, but we do know how it feels to fall in love with the wrong person.

And that's the whole point. We, the common folk, can see ourselves in Juliet; who falls in love with the wrong person. In Hamlet, who contemplates if life is really worth all the effort. In Beatrice, a loud-mouthed woman who doesn't have time for the sexist males around her. In Orlando, who writes sappy poetry about the girl he has a crush on. He wrote about the world around him, and the people in it.

Also, Shakespeare was funny. No really, he was. He loved a good pun (the title "Much Ado About Nothing" is actually a triple pun, now that takes skill), and used every excuse possible to make a crude joke even in his most serious plays.

But we don't tell kids that. We stick "Romeo and Juliet" in their faces, only scratch the surface level of what the play is about, make them write a couple of lines in iambic pentameter, and we're done with it. No wonder kids think it's so boring.

Teachers nowadays can take a lesson from my eighth grade English teacher. On the first day of our Shakespeare unit, he divided the class into two halves: Montagues and Capulets. He handed us each a cheat-sheet of Shakespearean insults and told us to have at it. He wanted us to shout, to get nasty, to go hog-wild. We had never had a teacher tell us to be naughty before. We stood there doe-eyed with our papers in our hands. He rolled his eyes, stood on one of the desks, bit his thumb at us, asked us if we quarreled, and said that he would challenge us to battles of wits, but saw that we were unarmed. It was all very "Dead Poets Society."

But sure enough, some of the more rambunctious teenage boys got up on their desks and started yelling some of the more obscene insults at each other. And it was fun. We spent the class laughing and learning more about his language.

Sure, most of us couldn't actually read "Romeo and Juliet" without help from "No Fear Shakespeare," but it started a dialogue. It was fun, and he taught us what we all wanted to know: how to say the bad words.

I will never forget the Shakespeare lessons I got from that class, because they planted the seed for the love of him that I have now. That teacher did what all teachers should: start with the cool, interesting stuff to get us hooked, and then not censor the jokes in the play. And maybe I'm the only one in that class who went on to study Shakespeare in school, but I know I'm not the only one who left with at least a slight respect for that mad, hilarious, insanely talented bard from Stratford-Upon-Avon.