Love, Language, and the Art of Almost Cheating

I wanted to write about JavaScript in here but got way off track

photo from kimkim.com

The path to not hating French class

We got to choose our classes for our first semester in high school at the end of 8th grade. I rode the same bus as the boy I had a crush on at the time, and I overheard him telling someone that he was planning on taking French at the same high school I was going to. Even though Spanish was a much more practical language to learn in the US and one I’d already started back in 7th grade, his declaration made up my mind for me. French, it was. L’amour.

I already knew he didn’t like me like that because I definitely already had a mutual friend ask him, but no matter; I was a Tina Belcher, sure, but when it came to daydreaming, I had the unhinged confidence of a future wannabe Topanga Lawrence, certain I would turn into a swan someday. Surely, he will love me eventually. I’ll get prettier and less dorky in high school, probably. French class will force my existence upon him and he will have to notice me and realize he’s been in love with me the whole time! I wrote a lot of tortured teenage poetry about it.

Well, he didn’t end up in my 9th grade French class, and all I remember learning were some random nouns like the animals and colors and a few basic sentences like how to introduce ourselves. Once, my friends and I heard the term “rimming” and had no idea what it meant. For some unfathomable reason, we felt it was appropriate to ask the French teacher after class one day, and for some equally as unfathomable reason, he felt it was appropriate to tell us the actual answer. So I guess it wasn’t all fruitless.

He wasn’t in my 10th grade French class, either. That one was taught by Ms. Rogers, a very… French-seeming woman. Maybe she was French by lineage, I don’t know, but she definitely played the part well from a romanticizing American perspective. She was an older woman in her late 50s or 60s, styled her gracefully natural grey hair in classy but understated updos, and she always wore very old clothing in pristine condition with a matching brooch or other statement piece, just barely out of fashion, but nice enough in quality to be forgivable to anyone who would notice or care. She told us she inherited her mother’s beautiful clothing collection and loved it, especially the shoes. Her wardrobe was massive and it was her stated goal to never wear the exact same outfit twice. She was very proper and graceful. Her class was also where I first thought that maybe I actually hated French, but also where I learned how studying worked.

We had a test coming up that I was absolutely not prepared for because I didn’t really care because I hated the class. A classmate told me about a trick they learned: write your notes in really tiny handwriting on a strip of paper and then wrap it in a spiral on the inside of a clear Bic pen, facing outwards. You can look at it during the test and your hand will cover the view from the teacher.

Brilliant. I did it. Stayed up all night making my intricate little strip of paper with miniscule handwriting and spiraled it carefully into the pen. The next morning, I nervously took out my pen and Ms. Rogers came around and passed out the test.

I didn’t have to look at the pen once. I aced the test from memory because I spent all night accidentally studying in the act of preparing to cheat.

During sophomore year, I was considering not continuing with French the following year. I had fulfilled my two years of state high school language requirements, and while I was in the IB program, I wasn’t yet sure if I wanted to go for the full IB Diploma, part of which required a language class all four years. In the end, I decided to give it one more try and thought that if I hated this new teacher, I’d drop it the second semester.

That was the magic year, as it turned out. He was finally in the class with me that year, although by that point I was pretty much over it and had moved onto other boy drama. The real magic by then was the teacher. She, like Ms. Rogers, was also very French in demeanor and appearance, but younger than our parents and had more of a cool-but-serious babysitter vibe. I recall very scandalized whispers among us one day when she was wearing a skirt that showed off most of her lower legs, and we could clearly see dark hair under her nylons. So European!

Anyway, she taught in a more structured manner that worked better for me than the other teachers’ methods had. It could’ve also been simply the common curriculum of languages each year, but learning how to really conjugate verbs was a game changer for me, and somehow she got it through to me very easily. Learning how to do it in French made doing it in English make even more sense. It made me appreciate the word “had” much more than I thought I would. I felt like I finally understood the backbone of language and could fit everything else around it to learn more easily and thoroughly because I finally saw the bigger picture of language structure, so to speak. I bought that giant French verb book and wrote the best sentences. I ended up in the advanced-level class by senior year and earned an IB Certificate in French.

Of course, I don’t remember pretty much any French at all anymore because there’s been no practical way for me to practice it, and I really should’ve taken Spanish, but nooooo, the boy I liked in middle school just had to pick French, altering my life’s language trajectory forever. I lamented this often, somewhat amused, when trying to communicate with kitchen staff at restaurants where I later worked, and even later our neighbors. The things we do for boys! I can’t remember if I ever ended up telling him, but if not, he will probably know now because last I checked, he is subscribed to this newsletter. Hi there! I took French for you! Sorry about the decapitated Barbie heads and processed cheese I put in your mailbox in middle school. I was just trying to get your attention. I (mostly) keep my obsessive stalkerish tendencies in check now.

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Tried and Stoned

The only other time I significantly cheated in high school (although I maintain that the first time didn’t count since I didn’t actually use my forbidden cheat strip) was in Health class in 11th grade.

The teacher was notoriously lax, and he decided we’d done enough work that semester and made the final very easy: a word find. If we finished it within the week — an absurdly easy task in an absurdly lengthy time frame — we passed.

…I never got around to doing it, and neither did my friend Matt. Our friend Lee did, though, and while Matt and I were at lunch panicking about not being able to finish in time, Lee rolled his eyes and told us to go ahead and photocopy his in the library. He hadn’t written his name on it yet, and he reminded us that we should write our names in marker and use the same marker to go over his circled words so that it didn’t look photocopied. We raced to the library, made two copes, and promptly failed to take any of the rest of his advice.

The teacher had us silently sitting watching a movie or something while he “graded” the finals. He called out Matt’s name. Matt looked up and Mr F. looked him in the eye and tore his word find in half.

He called out my name and did the same to my wordfind, then Lee’s. He caught on to our scheme right away; Lee was right. Ope. The three of us were summoned to the dean’s office where we were given a bewildered lecture about not only cheating, but cheating so stupidly, on something so profoundly easy as a wordfind and mercifully given the opportunity to do the entire wordfind in the next 20 minutes in order to pass. We all did so.

Mr F. walked us back down to the basement classroom and told us to stand in the front of the room, facing all of the other students. He handed the three of us a small stack of paper each and told us to hand them out to the other students. Baffled, we did so, and returned to the front of the room. Mr F. instructed the class to crumple their paper into balls. Also baffled, they followed his instructions and we all awaited more.

“Now throw them at these three doofuses for being idiots who cheated on something as easy as a wordfind.”

They nervously giggled, hesitated for just a second, and then began pelting us with the crumpled papers, gleefully participating in the “stoning” that we so clearly deserved for being such morons.

I mostly gave up on cheating in school after that.

…Speaking of being stoned for the first time, Matt, Lee, and I always got into various shenanigans. Lee, responsible and generous wordfind master that he was, offered to do the honors. Matt lived a block away from me, so Lee came to us and pulled out a joint. We walked down the wintry street to some nearby corner and each took a couple puffs. I didn’t think I felt much, but I was nervous that I looked or smelled high and that my mom would find out. I can’t remember which one of them suggested it now, but I’m pretty sure it was Lee who told me to jump in the snow in my front yard and roll around to get rid of the smell, which of course I immediately did as the two of them cracked up in that stacatto stoner-laugh. I got up and shook myself off, laughed with them, and went inside and quickly escaped to my room to write about the experience in my diary, explaining, in very disjointed handwriting that was missing several random letters and words, that I didn’t think it did anything to me, but wow, my hands felt like they were floating.

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