In senior citizen French class, our gaunt and cranky instructor offered us all “un baiser” and we all looked apprehensive. Then he held up a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, and had a hearty chuckle at our expense. “Don’t use it as a verb,” he said, and spelled the word it means when you use “baiser” as a verb. He looked very waggish.
As usual, he hectored us unmercifully as we went through our homework sentences. He asked us to repeat ourselves, and often corrected us when we had said it right, either because he had misheard us, or because our accents are atrocious.
When it came time to do dictation, he made me go up to the board “because you’re good at it,” and said, slowly and clearly, “Ne dit pas trop de choses sur toi aux autres. N’oubliez pas quand la jalousie entre en jeu. Les aveugles commencent à voir, les muets commencent à parlor, et des sourds commencent à parler.” (Don’t reveal too much about yourself to others. Remember what happens when jealousy comes into play: the blind begin to see, the mute begin to speak, and the deaf begin to hear.)
My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t believe I spelled “jalousie,” “aveugles,” and “sourds” correctly.
People have stopped giving me a hard time for knowing what I’m doing, though. I didn’t get in trouble with the teacher for chattering this time, because everyone was cheerful. I think it was because it was Election Day and we were all hopeful for a little bit of improvement. One of the men had been an election judge, and he explained to the Russian woman how you get a provisional ballot.
I sit next to another retired English teacher. I took off my mask to eat the chocolate, and she saw my septum piercing. “I didn’t get nose pierced until I retired,” she said. “It was awful, they kept telling us to look professional. Having to wear high heels all those years. Now teachers dress terrible, they have tears in their jeans.”
“It’s not easy to get teachers these days,” I said and she nodded.
“I’m going to get a tattoo, too,” she said.
The instructor, rather than getting a tattoo, was having a hernia operation the next day. He was pretty cheerful about it, because he had one before, but we arranged for an email chain just in case.
This is the ideal class I have been searching for, for several years.