So, I'm hooked on a blog I found while digging around on the Fat Birder 500: Ornitho-Blog. It's all in French! I took French for seven years in school--from 7th grade through my first year in college. I haven't used it for quite some time apart from getting the odd joke in French films that get lost in the translation. So, it's fun for me to test it out by reading Guillaume's blog.
I don't know if I would have stuck with French for so long had it not been for my high school French Teacher Madame Theobald. She was great, some of my best high school memories are from her class. In the advanced classes she had us read Waiting for Godot and Marat Sade in French and would show us great movies like Jean de Florette, she got you to take another semester by showing the sequel Manon de Source, and who could forget French in Action? Heck, the day before Christmas vacation she even showed us the Simpsons episode where Bart gets put into slave labor as an exchange student in France. Oh, and then she introduced us to the mad song stylings of Yves Montand--I still get Rue St.Vincent stuck in my head. Good times.
I remember she had the best sense of humor and more than once she could have clobbered me for being a pain in the tookus. Oh man, one of the guys in our class was a real trouble maker named...well we'll use his French class name "Moliere"--incredibly intelligent, but squirrelly. We were taking our final and I finished early and went to take out my copy of Clan of the Cave Bear to read for the rest of the period. I found a wad of rubber bands in my purse and came up with a plan. I put my novel on the desk and surrounded my arms around it and put face down towards the book so as to look as though I was lost in the world of prehistoric man. I flicked away. I could see Madame Theobald look up in my peripheral vision searching for the offender and then go back to grading papers at her desk. I continued my attack. She kept looking up, towards where she thought the rubber projectiles were being launched. At one point, Moliere looked up from his test to just look around. Madame Theobald blamed him for the attack. He protested which just made him look guiltier. As Madame Theobald held up the rubber bands on her finger and the rest of the class figured out what was going on, they all giggled, allowing me to giggle with such evil glee that no one would suspect that I was laughing at how well my prank had turned out.
Moliere lost some class points that day, but not enough to affect his overall grade. Several weeks later during the following semester I admitted with pride that I had actually been the one who executed the rubber band assault. In her shock she deducted several class points from me, but still not enough to really affect my overall grade. After going from Madame Theobald and her enthusiasm for French language and culture I went into college to a French teacher who had a penchant for pastel suits. It's hard to take a guy seriously with a Liberace pompadour who wears a creamcicle colored three piece suit (no, I'm not exaggerating about his appearance).