Friday morning I spent about an hour and 45 minutes staring at some dude's hairline. And when I say some dude I actually mean a Buddhist monk. And when I say Buddhist monk, I mean some guy who dressed in red robes and worked at a Buddhist center. To be honest I have no idea what he introduced himself as because, as I shall explain, I did not understand a single word that came out of this man's mouth.
There were definitely a solid few minutes where I was shaking with suppressed laughter when, sitting Indian style with my ass propped on a meditation cushion, I realized that I was stuck in a never-ending lecture with a man who was less intelligible than my newborn niece. I wasn't laughing at him, mind you--no way, having been the unintelligible foreigner in Israel, I'd never laugh at someone else's accent. Rather, I was laughing at myself, because at the time I thought I was the only person who didn't understand this man.
I looked around me as this lovely gentleman spoke to us, and all I saw were all of my classmates nodding attentively, as though this man had just provided some life-changing insight into the nature of the world. An insight which was completely lost on me. Needless to say, I began to zone out and wonder about things. For as much as I tried to understand this man he seemed to get even harder to understand. And after witnessing our tutor continually ask questions about lineage and history that invited hour-long responses, not a second of which I could understand, I began to wonder if I had had a stroke.
At one point the monk may have asked me a question. Yes, me personally. Actually though I'm not entirely sure it was a question, and I'm not entirely sure it was addressed to me. It was sort of the aural equivalent of someone with a lazy eye addressing you. There was definitely a moment where I considered pointing at myself and mouthing the words, "Sorry, me?" and quickly glancing behind me and slightly to the left.
All I know though is that I'm grateful we didn't do any silent meditation. When I saw the hippie white guy lead us into this room with mats and cushions I got a little afraid. I'm not afraid of finding Enlightenment, but I am afraid of the weird noises my stomach makes. Public silent meditation and I don't get along because my stomach is a bit of a diva. Well, he's not really a diva--maybe he's just one of those people that is afraid of awkward silences. "HEY GUYS!" my stomach likes to scream in silent moments. And even though most of these dear classmates have seen me fall over furniture, molest trees, fall in front of an ambulance, and eat disgusting amounts of kebab, I don't want them to misunderstand my stomach noises and think I'm the sort of person who goes to other people's shrines just to fart in them.
This did, however, lead to a private silent mediation during the monk's lecture. I began to ponder meaningful questions about the relationship between farts and Buddhism. Namely, "If you're about to reach Enlightenment in a shrine and somebody farts, do you get sent back a bit?" And "If you intentionally fart in a shrine to distract someone from reaching Enlightenment, will you get reborn as something really nasty?"
I can't believe they let me teach RE...
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Double double toil and please just let me die now...
Oh man, I've been bitten by the theater bug. I offered to help with props/building/whatever with the local Passion Play, and a shortage of willing players has meant that I've since been upgraded to the status of actor, with an actual honest-to-goodness line. I flatter myself by thinking that the person who allowed me to take on this role thinks I can draw upon inner acting strength I didn't know I had to add meat to this one line, when in reality (as learned from this past Sunday's rehearsal) when I act--on a good day--I just sound like a quietly constipated version of my normal, dull self.
To be fair, I am enjoying myself and I'm happy to be part of it. But honestly it also brings back horrific memories of my time as a theater major at college. All I wanted to do was play with lights and use the occasional power tool, but my college thought that in order to be a good lighting designer I needed to know how to act.
All I remember about that class is that every day was humiliating agony. I still cringe at the thought of having to perform that witches thing from the beginning of Macbeth in front of everybody. I remember during rehearsals for it my partners would nag me to put more effort into it. Get into character, they'd tell me. Double double toil and trouble... And I'd just silently pray that either I or everyone else or both would die before the performance date, because the thought of enthusiastically crouching around an imaginary cauldron and speaking in verse seemed somehow even worse than simply shitting my pants both visibly and audibly while onstage.
It got to the point where 18 year old me considered drastic solutions. Whenever I had to perform in front of my class I would fantasize that while I was reciting my poem/monologue/whatever I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume. "Surely that'd embarrass you even more, Sam," you're probably saying. But the fact is that imagining I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume made the rest of the class seem ridiculous. Here I am, wearing an invisible inflatable penis costume in front of the entire class--and these dumbasses don't even realize it! I'm giving a serious monologue in my dull voice of indigestion and I'm NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT I'M DRESSED AS A HUGE INFLATABLE PENIS! And you're taking me seriously! Who's the idiot now, guys? Oh, that's right, YOU!
Well, a girl can dream...
I eventually gave up on the whole theater major thing. It wasn't just the horrific acting classes, but also the crap jobs I had to do backstage. My personal favorite was "Lint Mistress," where my job was literally picking lint off the leading man.
As part of the costume crew I had to follow around the costume designer, a grad student who had such a strong Great Lakes accent that I thought her jaw was going to pop off at any minute from the vowel strain. On one memorable occasion I was called in to help her with the leading man's pants (TROUSERS!), so I followed her into a small dressing room where the three of us could be alone together. She decided that the leading man's pants needed to be expanded, so without any kind of warning she just tore this guy's pants open. So the guy was just standing there with a huge, gaping hole in the region of Ass, looking completely appalled. The costume designer had to hurry out of the room to get more pins, leaving me alone with this guy I don't know but who I regularly pick lint off of, now with him in underpants and pathetic tatters that were once pants. I remember trying to turn around to preserve some semblance of this guy's modesty, only to find that a mirror was behind me. So instead I just sort of stared off to the side while the leading man and I both grew increasingly red in the face as we both tried to pretend like he was not wearing shredded pants right now. He was a senior and I was a freshman, so he tried to break up the awkwardness of the situation by asking me how I was settling in. "Not very well at the moment," I wanted to tell him.
After about five eternities the costume designer finally returned to fix the pants, but by that point I was pretty convinced that theater was no longer for me. I needed order in this chaotic world. I needed to know that pants would not suddenly be ripped apart at any given moment without any kind of a warning.
The whole realization that theater was not the major for me made me think of Roland the Farter, or more importantly Le Petomane.
Le Petomane was a guy who farted professionally in the Victorian era, a guy who is sometimes referred to as a "fartiste." Apparently he used to do farting impressions of the San Francisco Earthquake, and he'd do animal sounds. This flatulist retired during World War I because he thought the world was too inhumane. Just as I only wanted to play with lights, he just wanted to fart. That's all he wanted.
And that, my friends, is beautiful.
(Speaking of theater, if you'd like to read a short scene about St Thomas a Becket that I wrote when I was 16, please click here)
To be fair, I am enjoying myself and I'm happy to be part of it. But honestly it also brings back horrific memories of my time as a theater major at college. All I wanted to do was play with lights and use the occasional power tool, but my college thought that in order to be a good lighting designer I needed to know how to act.
All I remember about that class is that every day was humiliating agony. I still cringe at the thought of having to perform that witches thing from the beginning of Macbeth in front of everybody. I remember during rehearsals for it my partners would nag me to put more effort into it. Get into character, they'd tell me. Double double toil and trouble... And I'd just silently pray that either I or everyone else or both would die before the performance date, because the thought of enthusiastically crouching around an imaginary cauldron and speaking in verse seemed somehow even worse than simply shitting my pants both visibly and audibly while onstage.
It got to the point where 18 year old me considered drastic solutions. Whenever I had to perform in front of my class I would fantasize that while I was reciting my poem/monologue/whatever I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume. "Surely that'd embarrass you even more, Sam," you're probably saying. But the fact is that imagining I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume made the rest of the class seem ridiculous. Here I am, wearing an invisible inflatable penis costume in front of the entire class--and these dumbasses don't even realize it! I'm giving a serious monologue in my dull voice of indigestion and I'm NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT I'M DRESSED AS A HUGE INFLATABLE PENIS! And you're taking me seriously! Who's the idiot now, guys? Oh, that's right, YOU!
Well, a girl can dream...
I eventually gave up on the whole theater major thing. It wasn't just the horrific acting classes, but also the crap jobs I had to do backstage. My personal favorite was "Lint Mistress," where my job was literally picking lint off the leading man.
As part of the costume crew I had to follow around the costume designer, a grad student who had such a strong Great Lakes accent that I thought her jaw was going to pop off at any minute from the vowel strain. On one memorable occasion I was called in to help her with the leading man's pants (TROUSERS!), so I followed her into a small dressing room where the three of us could be alone together. She decided that the leading man's pants needed to be expanded, so without any kind of warning she just tore this guy's pants open. So the guy was just standing there with a huge, gaping hole in the region of Ass, looking completely appalled. The costume designer had to hurry out of the room to get more pins, leaving me alone with this guy I don't know but who I regularly pick lint off of, now with him in underpants and pathetic tatters that were once pants. I remember trying to turn around to preserve some semblance of this guy's modesty, only to find that a mirror was behind me. So instead I just sort of stared off to the side while the leading man and I both grew increasingly red in the face as we both tried to pretend like he was not wearing shredded pants right now. He was a senior and I was a freshman, so he tried to break up the awkwardness of the situation by asking me how I was settling in. "Not very well at the moment," I wanted to tell him.
After about five eternities the costume designer finally returned to fix the pants, but by that point I was pretty convinced that theater was no longer for me. I needed order in this chaotic world. I needed to know that pants would not suddenly be ripped apart at any given moment without any kind of a warning.
The whole realization that theater was not the major for me made me think of Roland the Farter, or more importantly Le Petomane.
And that, my friends, is beautiful.
(Speaking of theater, if you'd like to read a short scene about St Thomas a Becket that I wrote when I was 16, please click here)
Back in college
Back during my quick stint as a film major at college I had a really good looking professor. Staring at this man during class made all those hours of pretentious films that we had to watch allllll worth it. But as hot as he was, and as much as I dubbed Fridays "Hot Prof Day" because I had his class and another looker's class, this guy was a shit teacher.
Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. Having gained a bit of teaching experience myself now, I have a lot more sympathy for him than I did back when I was 19. I realize now that sometimes students will make contributions in class for which all the best pedagogical theorists agree the only appropriate response is "What the fuck are you talking about?" And I also realize that sometimes kids will ask questions that I have to wonder what language they're speaking in. And frequently when you ask kids for an answer to a question they'll come up with some answer so horribly WRONG that only Satan himself could have planted it in the child's head.
So anyway, this professor would have us screen our short films in front of the class. My one and only film made as a film major was about a Jew getting so pissed off about Campus Crusade for Christ that he ends up leading an exodus to Skokie, IL. But you didn't really need to know that.
Anyway, after each film was screened the professor would flip on just one of the lights. There he'd stand, only half of him lit by a small pool of weak, orange light in an otherwise dark room, and he'd spout off awkward comments. Trying to express an interest in our beginners' work but clearly not sure how, he'd say things like, "Wow. So what was up with [*insert the worst part of a student's project*]?" He didn't say much, usually just one line, but the one line was without fail unintentionally awful. The sort of thing that would make you want to step outside, go up to the water outside, and slowly immerse yourself in Lake Michigan and never come up for air. Then, silently gloating over someone else's failure while also realizing that we were next, the audience of film students would sit in awkward stillness, someone would cough uncomfortably, another person would give a good ol' SNUUUUURF to remedy their runny nose caused by the Midwestern winter, and then the professor would ask us to put on the next film.
Repeat for each film.
Besides Professor HotStuff and his awkward comments though, there were a lot of other things to look forward to when it came to film class. And when I say a lot of other things I really just mean Penny*. Or maybe it was Penni. Or Peny? I don't know. Penny seems too normal for this girl, one of my dear film classmates. I remain fully convinced that she was a very nice person, but my God was she delightfully bizarre. Years from now when I'm old and gray and about to die alone in my house with my 500 cats (all of whom I will detest), I think her coats are what I will remember about this period of my life.
What I remember is that she would wear enormous fur coats. Like, MASSIVE fur coats. They were usually cut short, almost a bit like crop top fur coat. She had several different fur coats, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all made her look like a yeti. I always used to anticipate her arrival to class because she was one of those people who is physically incapable of arriving on time to anything, so every Friday she would waltz in about 20 minutes late like it ain't no thang, and she would disrobe. And off would come an absolutely ENORMOUS and unspeakably furry coat. And then it would take her another five minutes for the coat to be lovingly tucked into a vacant seat like it was not just an enormous collection of dead, fluffy animal skins but instead a pile of fluffy and inanimate puppies. I mean, I was a theatre/film major--I loved a good production, and this definitely counted.
I'm also convinced that she had some sort of a religious obligation to have at least 10 animals on her at any given moment, much like a Sikh's Five Ks. On one memorable occasion I watched her take off a gigantic light brown fur coat only to find that she was wearing a suede hippie-indian vest. With colorful embroidery. And which was lined with even more yeti fur.
I also liked the pillbox hats that she would wear. They were exactly like what Jackie Kennedy used to wear, except that Penny's had the same texture as latex. And they were metallic and neon. They looked a bit like what I would imagine we think hookers would have worn in the 1960s (regardless of how they may have actually dressed.
Anyway, that was my undergraduate experience. Just thought you should know.
.
Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. Having gained a bit of teaching experience myself now, I have a lot more sympathy for him than I did back when I was 19. I realize now that sometimes students will make contributions in class for which all the best pedagogical theorists agree the only appropriate response is "What the fuck are you talking about?" And I also realize that sometimes kids will ask questions that I have to wonder what language they're speaking in. And frequently when you ask kids for an answer to a question they'll come up with some answer so horribly WRONG that only Satan himself could have planted it in the child's head.
So anyway, this professor would have us screen our short films in front of the class. My one and only film made as a film major was about a Jew getting so pissed off about Campus Crusade for Christ that he ends up leading an exodus to Skokie, IL. But you didn't really need to know that.
Anyway, after each film was screened the professor would flip on just one of the lights. There he'd stand, only half of him lit by a small pool of weak, orange light in an otherwise dark room, and he'd spout off awkward comments. Trying to express an interest in our beginners' work but clearly not sure how, he'd say things like, "Wow. So what was up with [*insert the worst part of a student's project*]?" He didn't say much, usually just one line, but the one line was without fail unintentionally awful. The sort of thing that would make you want to step outside, go up to the water outside, and slowly immerse yourself in Lake Michigan and never come up for air. Then, silently gloating over someone else's failure while also realizing that we were next, the audience of film students would sit in awkward stillness, someone would cough uncomfortably, another person would give a good ol' SNUUUUURF to remedy their runny nose caused by the Midwestern winter, and then the professor would ask us to put on the next film.
Repeat for each film.
Besides Professor HotStuff and his awkward comments though, there were a lot of other things to look forward to when it came to film class. And when I say a lot of other things I really just mean Penny*. Or maybe it was Penni. Or Peny? I don't know. Penny seems too normal for this girl, one of my dear film classmates. I remain fully convinced that she was a very nice person, but my God was she delightfully bizarre. Years from now when I'm old and gray and about to die alone in my house with my 500 cats (all of whom I will detest), I think her coats are what I will remember about this period of my life.
What I remember is that she would wear enormous fur coats. Like, MASSIVE fur coats. They were usually cut short, almost a bit like crop top fur coat. She had several different fur coats, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all made her look like a yeti. I always used to anticipate her arrival to class because she was one of those people who is physically incapable of arriving on time to anything, so every Friday she would waltz in about 20 minutes late like it ain't no thang, and she would disrobe. And off would come an absolutely ENORMOUS and unspeakably furry coat. And then it would take her another five minutes for the coat to be lovingly tucked into a vacant seat like it was not just an enormous collection of dead, fluffy animal skins but instead a pile of fluffy and inanimate puppies. I mean, I was a theatre/film major--I loved a good production, and this definitely counted.
I'm also convinced that she had some sort of a religious obligation to have at least 10 animals on her at any given moment, much like a Sikh's Five Ks. On one memorable occasion I watched her take off a gigantic light brown fur coat only to find that she was wearing a suede hippie-indian vest. With colorful embroidery. And which was lined with even more yeti fur.
I also liked the pillbox hats that she would wear. They were exactly like what Jackie Kennedy used to wear, except that Penny's had the same texture as latex. And they were metallic and neon. They looked a bit like what I would imagine we think hookers would have worn in the 1960s (regardless of how they may have actually dressed.
Anyway, that was my undergraduate experience. Just thought you should know.
.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Bitches love Iceland
So this one time I met this bitch who fucking LOVES Iceland. I mean, I thought I had a passion for England, but what I thought was my love for England is nothing but a slight fluttering of the heart that one might feel if England were a passing hot man on a bus, compared to this girl's infatuation with Iceland. See, when she would talk about Iceland I was tempted to ask if the two of them needed a moment alone.
Speaking of needing a moment alone with a country...
Everything we saw around us would remind her of something she saw in Iceland when she was on vacation there last week. She had a sip of beer and then talked about how she had a beer back in Iceland. I asked her if it tasted anything like the beer she was drinking now, and is that why she brought it up? And she said, "No, it was just a beer. The beer reminded me that I drank beer in Iceland." She then pointed at her sweater and revealed that it was bought in Iceland. We passed postcards in shops, and she informed me that (shockingly) they do in fact sell Iceland postcards in Iceland. We were in Paris at the moment, and she thought it important to tell me (lest I think otherwise) that, unlike these Parisian postcards, the Iceland postcards didn't have the Eiffel Tower on them. If it drizzled, the drops of rain would be compared to the size of the raindrops in Iceland. The five words she knew in Icelandic were unfavorably compared to the three words she had learned in French, and her understanding of the Icelandic governmental system (gleaned from about four days spent there) was used to give comparative analysis of the French governmental system (the understanding of which was gleaned from about two days spent in Paris).
Anyway, I met Mrs. Iceland when I was staying in a youth hostel in Paris back in December when I got so upset that I had to leave the country for a good ol' fashioned mope. She was exactly my age and, when compared with our other roommate who on our first night went on a tirade against toilet paper, she seemed relatively normal. Sure, I said. Sure I'll go touring with you tomorrow. I figured maybe this trip didn't have to be all about moping and feeling sorry for myself (though there'd still be plenty of time for that), and maybe I could even make a new friend.
Though I guess I should've taken the hint when she kept demanding that I do a British accent for her. She was Australian and for some reason was obsessed with the fact that I now live in England. "Speak in an English accent!" she'd shriek at me. "COME ON, SPEAK IN AN ENGLISH ACCENT!" The first few times I laughed it off and said that I couldn't do a good one. But then after about the tenth time she asked me I began to wonder if this girl had escaped from some sort of a treatment program for people with perverted obsessions with poorly done foreign accents. By the twentieth time I was contemplating suicide. I shrugged it off though and still agreed to spend the day seeing the sights of Paris with her, embracing the excuse to stop lying face-down on the bed and acting almost paralytic with sadness.
Spending the day with Mrs. Iceland turned out to be quite the eye-opener. I guess the major lesson I learned is that never, in ANY circumstances, tell people that you teach. I've learned that people take the line, "I'm a teacher" as an invitation to have explosive diarrhea of inane questions that would make even your 6th graders think, "What a retard." Like, it's to the point where I would now prefer to tell people I have a thriving career as a rapist, because then at least people would leave me well the fuck alone.
I guess I should have been relieved that for once this girl was expressing an interest in something other than my ability to do a fake English accent or the noble nation of Iceland, but in reality I just wanted to stuff a rag into her mouth. A rag that was attached to a Molotov cocktail. The soundtrack of Paris was replaced by this girl's constant stream of "What is that? What is this? Where are we? How do you say French fries in French? How do you say toilets in French? How do you say how do you say in French? Comment d---wait, how did it go? Comment dit-on France in French? Comment dit-on I like in French? Okay, j'aime Iceland. Is that how you say I like Iceland in French? How do you say fjords in French?"
She asked for a steady stream of vocabulary in French, and for some reason understood only by Mrs Iceland and God, she felt it necessary to specify "in French" at the end of every request. As though I'd suddenly assume she were asking me about Hebrew if she didn't clarify each and every goddamn time.
"Where are we again? Wait, where's that? What is that? How do you say Notre Dame in French? Notre Dame? That's weird."
Finally I suggested we visit the Sainte-Chapelle, as I had fond memories of the windows when I last visited a few years ago.
And then this girl came up with a winner: "Tell me the history of Sainte-Chapelle." What? Like, what about it? "Yeah, just tell me the history." Um...
I told her I didn't remember, that last time I was there about about four years ago. She then changed her question: "Oh. Then how much did the entry cost?" I reminded her that, again, it was four years ago and I didn't remember. And she just about had a stroke, so shocked was she. How could I not remember how much something cost four years ago???? THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!!
Yes, because what I remember about vacations is ticket prices.
I guess the clincher though was sitting at a sidewalk cafe, the kind of place where you pay 8 euro for a hot chocolate. Trying to make conversation, and perhaps sensing that I had long since checked out of the conversation, she asked me a question about religion. "Tell me the difference between Islam and Christianity," she asked.
Hmm. I honestly told her I was happy to talk about religion, but I didn't know where to even begin with that kind of question. Is there anything specific she wanted to know? Could she narrow down her question and then maybe I could help her out?
She carefully considered my request, and then asked, "So is Abraham a prophet in Islam and also in Christianity?" I answered her question by backing up a little, explaining what a prophet is, and then answering that, yes, Abraham is a prophet in both.
And she responded by nodding sagely and saying, "Ah, so they're the same religion then?"
I got a little flustered, "Well, not exactly. They have some things in common, and they both like Abraham, but they're also quite different."
"Right," she argued, "but if they both have Abraham as a prophet then they're the same religion, yeah?"
"Um. I..."
I guess now would also be a good time to point out that Mrs Iceland was the daughter of Methodist ministers.
At this point I gave up. You have a creepy fascination with English accents, you basically want to have sex with Iceland, you ask stupid questions, and now you think that having anything in the middle part of a Venn Diagram makes both sides of the Venn Diagram the exact same thing. Learn the concept of Venn Diagrams, lady, and then we'll talk. So fuck you, Mrs Iceland. We're done. Tomorrow I'd rather take a gamble on Miss "Toilet Paper is the Devil's Work."
Speaking of needing a moment alone with a country...
Everything we saw around us would remind her of something she saw in Iceland when she was on vacation there last week. She had a sip of beer and then talked about how she had a beer back in Iceland. I asked her if it tasted anything like the beer she was drinking now, and is that why she brought it up? And she said, "No, it was just a beer. The beer reminded me that I drank beer in Iceland." She then pointed at her sweater and revealed that it was bought in Iceland. We passed postcards in shops, and she informed me that (shockingly) they do in fact sell Iceland postcards in Iceland. We were in Paris at the moment, and she thought it important to tell me (lest I think otherwise) that, unlike these Parisian postcards, the Iceland postcards didn't have the Eiffel Tower on them. If it drizzled, the drops of rain would be compared to the size of the raindrops in Iceland. The five words she knew in Icelandic were unfavorably compared to the three words she had learned in French, and her understanding of the Icelandic governmental system (gleaned from about four days spent there) was used to give comparative analysis of the French governmental system (the understanding of which was gleaned from about two days spent in Paris).
Anyway, I met Mrs. Iceland when I was staying in a youth hostel in Paris back in December when I got so upset that I had to leave the country for a good ol' fashioned mope. She was exactly my age and, when compared with our other roommate who on our first night went on a tirade against toilet paper, she seemed relatively normal. Sure, I said. Sure I'll go touring with you tomorrow. I figured maybe this trip didn't have to be all about moping and feeling sorry for myself (though there'd still be plenty of time for that), and maybe I could even make a new friend.
Though I guess I should've taken the hint when she kept demanding that I do a British accent for her. She was Australian and for some reason was obsessed with the fact that I now live in England. "Speak in an English accent!" she'd shriek at me. "COME ON, SPEAK IN AN ENGLISH ACCENT!" The first few times I laughed it off and said that I couldn't do a good one. But then after about the tenth time she asked me I began to wonder if this girl had escaped from some sort of a treatment program for people with perverted obsessions with poorly done foreign accents. By the twentieth time I was contemplating suicide. I shrugged it off though and still agreed to spend the day seeing the sights of Paris with her, embracing the excuse to stop lying face-down on the bed and acting almost paralytic with sadness.
Spending the day with Mrs. Iceland turned out to be quite the eye-opener. I guess the major lesson I learned is that never, in ANY circumstances, tell people that you teach. I've learned that people take the line, "I'm a teacher" as an invitation to have explosive diarrhea of inane questions that would make even your 6th graders think, "What a retard." Like, it's to the point where I would now prefer to tell people I have a thriving career as a rapist, because then at least people would leave me well the fuck alone.
I guess I should have been relieved that for once this girl was expressing an interest in something other than my ability to do a fake English accent or the noble nation of Iceland, but in reality I just wanted to stuff a rag into her mouth. A rag that was attached to a Molotov cocktail. The soundtrack of Paris was replaced by this girl's constant stream of "What is that? What is this? Where are we? How do you say French fries in French? How do you say toilets in French? How do you say how do you say in French? Comment d---wait, how did it go? Comment dit-on France in French? Comment dit-on I like in French? Okay, j'aime Iceland. Is that how you say I like Iceland in French? How do you say fjords in French?"
She asked for a steady stream of vocabulary in French, and for some reason understood only by Mrs Iceland and God, she felt it necessary to specify "in French" at the end of every request. As though I'd suddenly assume she were asking me about Hebrew if she didn't clarify each and every goddamn time.
"Where are we again? Wait, where's that? What is that? How do you say Notre Dame in French? Notre Dame? That's weird."
Finally I suggested we visit the Sainte-Chapelle, as I had fond memories of the windows when I last visited a few years ago.
And then this girl came up with a winner: "Tell me the history of Sainte-Chapelle." What? Like, what about it? "Yeah, just tell me the history." Um...
I told her I didn't remember, that last time I was there about about four years ago. She then changed her question: "Oh. Then how much did the entry cost?" I reminded her that, again, it was four years ago and I didn't remember. And she just about had a stroke, so shocked was she. How could I not remember how much something cost four years ago???? THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!!
Yes, because what I remember about vacations is ticket prices.
I guess the clincher though was sitting at a sidewalk cafe, the kind of place where you pay 8 euro for a hot chocolate. Trying to make conversation, and perhaps sensing that I had long since checked out of the conversation, she asked me a question about religion. "Tell me the difference between Islam and Christianity," she asked.
Hmm. I honestly told her I was happy to talk about religion, but I didn't know where to even begin with that kind of question. Is there anything specific she wanted to know? Could she narrow down her question and then maybe I could help her out?
She carefully considered my request, and then asked, "So is Abraham a prophet in Islam and also in Christianity?" I answered her question by backing up a little, explaining what a prophet is, and then answering that, yes, Abraham is a prophet in both.
And she responded by nodding sagely and saying, "Ah, so they're the same religion then?"
I got a little flustered, "Well, not exactly. They have some things in common, and they both like Abraham, but they're also quite different."
"Right," she argued, "but if they both have Abraham as a prophet then they're the same religion, yeah?"
"Um. I..."
I guess now would also be a good time to point out that Mrs Iceland was the daughter of Methodist ministers.
At this point I gave up. You have a creepy fascination with English accents, you basically want to have sex with Iceland, you ask stupid questions, and now you think that having anything in the middle part of a Venn Diagram makes both sides of the Venn Diagram the exact same thing. Learn the concept of Venn Diagrams, lady, and then we'll talk. So fuck you, Mrs Iceland. We're done. Tomorrow I'd rather take a gamble on Miss "Toilet Paper is the Devil's Work."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)