Usually at about 5 o'clock every weekday afternoon I start wondering if somebody slipped roofies into my diet coke. My German textbook starts sounding more and more like something Dr. Seuss and Salvatore Dali might have come up on a late-night bender. Lemme think about this dialogue:
"That allowed to are you not."
"Why? I wanted then only my bike to explode."
"And why could you that not on the street do?"
"That wanted I yes, but then had I no water."
"That may you not!"
(Tangram Aktuell, Niveau a2-1, p. 11)
But let's face it, four and a half hours of German is four and a half hours of German and even a classroom full of (practically speaking) adults can start getting a little dozy. The Italian guy who wasn't really making much sense in the early afternoon is coming out with stuff like: "Escht wulle ish un kunne nish," which sounds a lot more like cave speak than German, or even Italian. Usually at this point, the Chinese Humboldt scholar begins to eye the door, and I wonder if I can get away with going to the bathroom for the fourth time.
You probably remember moments in grade school when somebody did something funny behind the teacher's back and you along with the rest of class spent the next 30 seconds doubled over in hysterical, silent pain. I once I watched my brother Greggie stick a pea up his nose at the dinner table. We tried so hard not to laugh that he finally lost control and then reverse snorted the pea back up into his nasal passage and started gagging.
Something along the same lines applied today when, with twenty minutes of class to go, our teacher proposed a role-playing game between the slurring Italian and one of the Japanese ladies. I can't really do justice to what happened next, but it was a little like turning on the Spanish channel when two actors are having a heated argument, except this was more like the Spanish channel overdubbed in Japanese-Italian with the audio routed through a high-powered ceiling fan. I tried to stop from laughing by wedging my face between my textbook and the diet coke bottle, but the entire room had already lost its bearing on decency and erupted in mirth. We know how to make a joke at our own expense.
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5 comments:
HA! Great story. But come on, Majel: this is what Youtube is for!
It reminds me of Japanese class senior year, when our petite, ultra-reserved teacher asked a student "Thompson-san" what he made for dinner last night (answer: rice). As he wrenched his face into a whole series of indescrible expressions, this is what he said:
"Yesterday... night... I... cooked... Japan."
We all giggled, but the teacher just LOST IT. After what seemed like minutes of uncontrollable laughter, she took a deep breath, bowed to the student, and said, "Thompson-san, thank you for the joke."
That is so funny. I read this twice and actually laughed harder the second time. But who are you? I love comments, but what's up with the dodgy code name, man??!!
What, and blow my Internet cover? Nah. You'll figure it out eventually. Hint: you and I roomed with the same person at different times.
Peter! (?)
Bingo!
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