The French Dinner

What is it about French teachers that make middle school and high school students want to torture them with bad classroom behavior? They naturally transmit some sort of signal to young students that says "go absolutely bonkers in my class." It's like spilling a drop of blood in a shark tank, inducing what can best be described as a sort of French class feeding frenzy. I'm not sure I've identified the quality common to all French teachers that causes this; perhaps it is having a big heart.

No matter the unjustified (but very real) cause of said bad behavior, my classmates and I were 100% susceptible to it. The most well-behaved and the most depraved students couldn't help but go crazy each time we set foot in the French room.

Take, for example, the 7th grade French dinner. Our teacher arranged for each of us to cook a French meal and bring it to school one evening so that we could learn about French cuisine. All week we prepared decorations. One of the assignments was to draw a French themed place mat for the event. Things were already going south at this stage of the game.

My friend, Katie, was in charge of bringing the French onion soup. Very exotic. She and her friend Liz were running late, so she decided to be responsible and leave a voicemail for Madame.

I believe she actually said "Click."

Katie and Liz were, of course, perfectly fine, just stuck in traffic.

(Note: I realize how bad this is, but isn't it kind of hilarious that a middle schooler wouldn't know better?)

Well we all got mighty impatient waiting for the soup, so we planned to jump out and yell "Where were you!?" as Katie walked in the door. The problem was, Katie startled easily, so when we jumped out, she screamed and dumped the entire crock pot of soup onto herself.

The dinner spiraled out of control from there. I believe we ultimately made jokes about Madame's recent gall stone removal procedure and then began launching crepes out the window at passersby.

In high school, one might think we had matured and could carry ourselves in a more civilized manner. Not so. Once, when a giant dragon-fly flew into the room, we all used it as an opportunity to act panicked, as though a B52 bomber was swooping around overhead. It was a most immediate descent into madness.

When someone trapped the insect in a cabinet drawer, we could still hear its wings buzzing.

Quite often, our teacher needed a mental break from us, so a lady named Mrs. Chen would come in and substitute. She didn't know a lick of French. Every time we had her, she would threaten that if we didn't behave, she would make us watch West Side Story as our punishment. She must have loved that movie because even before we could act up, she was popping that tape in and pressing play.

We must have seen that movie at least 30 times.

When our teacher was preparing us for the AP French exam, she asked that we take a practice test. Before we began, she reminded us not to have "wandering eyes," meaning no sneaking a peak at anyone else's test. That's when John piped up with an honest question.

He had a point. None of us knew any French.

If you know any middle or high school French teachers, give them a hug the next time you see them. They probably need it.

First Impressions

Soon after I accepted my offer of admission to college, I started getting mail from my institution about an opportunity to go on a week-long camping/hiking trip with some future classmates. What better way to get to know your new peers than to not bathe in the woods for a week with some of them?

Wanting to get a head start making friends at a new school, I submitted my registration forms and began gathering equipment. In south Florida, being outside generally meant going to the beach, so Carolina mountain gear was pretty foreign to me.

One of the registration forms asked that I share an interesting fact about myself for my upperclassmen trip leaders. I was told this would be kept confidential. Naturally, I took it seriously.

Toward the end of the summer, I packed my bags and headed north into the wilderness. My group of fellow campers was a hodge-podge collection of kids from all types of locations and backgrounds. As soon as we started chatting, I knew I was in for a good week.

I really took to the mountainy outdoors. For one thing, my hair mysteriously got all big, soft, and poofy.

I also told lots of good jokes and my group thought I was really funny, which is what really mattered to me.

I suppose that the interesting hair situation and the good jokes had me feeling pretty confident. Confidence on me is akin to wearing a suit that is three sizes to big. It doesn't quite fit. I belong in the goofy-thus-approachable zone.

One evening, several groups had gathered at a camp site, so we were all enjoying time getting to know more future classmates. I was on fire with good jokes. Someone pulled out a frisbee and we began tossing it around. Eventually, someone accidentally threw it into a tree. Wanting to continue my streak of being impressive, I volunteered to climb the tree and get the disc.

I landed on nature's most dense gathering of thorns.

The scene was pretty bloody. I ended up standing in the middle of about 20 kids who were plucking thorns out of my body. This was not how I wanted to identify myself in college - as that bloody kid who took a face plant from a tree into a mess of thorns.

But alas. I was.

At the end of the trip, we drove directly from the last campsite into Orientation at the college. As many well-dressed students and families roamed the campus, my group trudged in covered in mud, sweat, and in my case, dried blood. We were instructed that we could shower and change in the Student Rec Center. On the way in, I opened the wrong door and set off the world's loudest alarm, calling more unfortunate attention to myself.

Once Campus Police got the alarm turned off and I got cleaned up, I met up with my parents and we headed over to the Dean's welcome address for the entire freshman class and their families. Of course my parents made us sit in the very front row. Part of this speech was about the amazing accomplishments of certain members of the class. All that stuff like starting an orphanage abroad or being a world champion at something like cup stacking or alpaca farming. The Dean concluded with a final point.

"There are also a few students you may want to watch out for. For example, look for student with a huge dent in his forehead. He sneezed so hard he blew his head into the microwave door. This is one of your future classmates!"

Startled, I jumped up about a mile in my chair. He actually leaned down and said:

Apparently, those forms weren't so confidential.

Good or bad, I had certainly made a first impression in college.

Texas!

Almost two years ago, it became apparent that I was going to be moving from the East Coast to Texas. No one was more surprised by this fact than I was. Living in Texas was about as high on my list of life goals as contracting rabies. Still, I found myself packing my bags and heading for the only state with an x in its name.

My original plan was to resist the fanatical cult-like obsession most people here have with the state.

But there really is a lot to like here in Houston. Take the beef, for instance. It seems that red meat is a necessary but not sufficient means of hospitality. Everywhere you go, you can't avoid being offered steak.

Most bars here don't regularly serve food, but once a week, they will have a steak night. They just wheel out a grill and start cooking slabs of beef. It's an idea both simple and beautiful.

I have a friend who is a vegetarian, which is about the equivalent of being a communist here.

  

Then there are the roads. In Texas, they love their 12 lane highways. It's very common to find yourself on an overpass where at least 900 major highways are intersecting. You always feel like 8 million cars are careening into your face.

They also have feeder roads that run the entire distance of the highways, but just parallel to them. All I'd every known were on- and off-ramps. Remarkable!

It's important to note that there is a distinct country western theme here. Despite the city being very modern and metropolitan, it's still Texas. The other day, I was walking along a city street with a friend when she exclaimed:

I'm telling you, you don't have the opportunity to say that where I'm from.

To be fair, Houston is also home to the world's largest medical center (so it's a great place to study medicine or to break your leg), the second most Fortune 500 companies headquartered in a city, the most restaurants per capita of any city in the U.S., one of the nation's largest shipping channels, 4 standing performing arts companies, and a vibrant arts scene.

But so what when you're home to the world's largest rodeo? The term "world's largest rodeo" is no joke. Imagine sitting in a giant arena, watching children cling desperately to the backs of sheep that are cantering through a giant pit of dirt (an event called "Mutton Busters").

 Next, you see what must be the world's largest American flag unfurl above you as troops repel from the ceiling amidst indoor fireworks.

Then, because it's Tejano night, the arena transforms into a giant stage where a popular Mexican musical group performs entirely in Spanish to a crowd that sings along to every word.

It is mind-blowingly awesome  (and around here, kinda viewed as normal - I recently mentioned how weird the rodeo is to a Houstonian friend, and he looked at me and asked, "What's weird about it?").

In Houston, there is also the issue of no-zoning. This means that virtually anything can be built anywhere.

You never know what you're going to get as you drive along.

As I mentioned before, my original idea was to resist falling in love with the great state of Texas. I am somewhat disturbed to report that despite maintaining a healthy sense of humor about this place, I haven't been entirely successful in sticking to the plan. I don't know. There's just something about standing up in the 7th inning stretch of an Astros baseball game and joining an entire stadium of fans in singing "Deep in the Heart of Texas..."

...that makes you feel at home.

The Perfect Picture

One day at my parents house, I noticed that a rather large cabinet filled with fine china was slowly sliding down the wall.



I alerted my dad.

We decided that the best immediate course of action was to grab bricks from outside and stack them under the cabinet's wooden frame to keep it from sliding completely off the wall.

My mom didn't take the news so well.

It was fun.

My aunt came over to help prepare for the party. Because I was conned into serving as the wait staff, she gave me a very thorough lesson about how to pour the champagne.

We made sure to warn my aunt not to go too near the cabinet because it could fall on her.

A little while later, I decided to document the festivities by snapping some pre-party pictures.



I approached my aunt, who was in the kitchen where the cabinet was. I asked her to smile for the camera. She held up her hands and flashed a big grin.

I pressed down the shutter button. There is a slight delay on many cheap digital cameras between pressing the button and an actual picture being taken. In that brief instant, someone on the other side of the kitchen dropped a pan, which clattered loudly onto the ground. Because my aunt had been warned about the possibility of the cabinet crashing down upon her, she immediately assumed this was what was happening. With a look of sheer terror, she turned to the cabinet, waved her hands frantically, and screamed loudly. That's exactly when the camera snapped the picture.

She was so far away from the cabinet.

I captured the best picture I will ever take: pure, honest terror of impending death on my aunt's face. Every once in a while, I like to dig around on my dad's computer, find the photo, and email it to everyone in the family. My aunt really appreciates it.

Mom's Mistake

My mom is a saint. She's a pure angel who floats on a cloud, gives out compliments, treats everyone nicely, and gives mean people the benefit of the doubt. It drives my dad crazy.

Her compassion and benevolence often caused my sister to cry at the dinner table.



We had to institute a no-sad-story-at-the-dinner-table policy on behalf of my sister, whose sobs routinely turned to gagging fits. This seemed to be a policy to which my mom never quite adhered.


As a child, my mom was so perfect that I can't get any good stories about her out of my grandparents. When I asked them what the worst thing she ever did was, their honest answer was that when she was in first grade, she ran out into the street chasing a squirrel without looking both ways. I had been hoping for some dirt like a story about how she ran off with the teenage son of the local mob don, changed her name to Harmony, and served as a drug mule in the 70's. Turns out, she never even puffed a cigarette.

But she did make a mistake involving a pelican once.

We were out on a dock on the intercoastal waterway, unloading the unused bait from a fishing trip, when a large pelican swooped down and landed on one of the pilings. He waited atop the barnacled post, watching us work and eyeing the frozen fish. That's when my mom got an idea.

She explained it to me with enthusiasm.

I had some concerns.

She continued to endorse the plan. She said it would be fine. She had never lied to me before, so I held up the fish, ever so tentatively.








I cried out in anguish, partially from the pain of my shredded hand caused by the sea beast's razor beak, partially from my all too close encounter with a disease infested sky demon, and partially from my loss of innocence resulting from the shattered facade that parents were always right.

My mom never got over her guilt. To this day, when she sees a pelican, she dies a little inside.

On the plus side, I did get a sweet scar out of it.