Vive La France, Wherein I Affectionately Fry Steve
My friend Steve, a fellow Social Studies teacher, throws an annual Bastille Day party. Technically, Steve and his wife Jen throw the party, but I'm pretty sure she's just in it for the beer. It's Steve who talks about Bastille Day all year long, and Steve who included pictures of Bastille Day parties past in the French Revolution powerpoint he shows his World History students.
You know you're at a teacher's party when:
A) the party is in celebration of Bastille Day, and the hosts aren't French;
B) the first thing you see upon arriving at the party is not the alcohol but a little table containing "Hello, my name is" stickers;
C) when it comes time to sing the French National Anthem, your host distributes self-made handouts that include the lyrics to said anthem, in both English and French, AND a little flowchart containing a brief history of the French Revolution.
Anyway, the party was lots of fun. I should know, what with having been the last to leave. It may also have been the only Bastille Day party in history at which guests could Vive la Resistance! by doing jello shots.
14 comments:
I am not sure if there is a rubric for frying, but this is not a bad first draft. You do need to include the following as "major details" in your signs of a teacher party segment:
A. Chalk - lots of chalk. Used on blackboards or sidewalks. Someone created a diagram of Yankee Stadium in the street during the evening's festivities. There were even names for were certain players would stand on the field.
B. "It should not be overlooked that Colonial Place (so named following the Jamestown Exposition; before it was called Sterling Place) is off the Lafayette River, named, of course, for the Marquis de Lafayette who we have to thank for saving General Washington's ass at Yorktown. Both Washington and Lafayette owned slaves; Lafayette freed his slaves and settled them on an estate he purchased for them in French Guiana. Washington died a slaveholder, though his writings appear to indicate that we wished for his slaves to be freed upon his death. Oh, and another thing: when General Pershing arrives in Paris with the AEF upon the entry of the US in WWI, he goes to the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette and supposedly was overhead to say "Layafette, We are Here." " This is an example of party talk at a teacher party.
C. Oh yeah, the entire party is tax deductible (just like "classroom supplies"). We are writing it off as a donation to the block, the civic league and, dare I say, the Republic.
Where's Omar at? I think the jump off is afoot.
I forgot about the chalk. That was the first thing I made fun of you for at the actual party. However, I totally missed all the talk of CP and Lafayette. I think I might have been giving an impassioned speech in defense of double-blocking my Geography class at the time.
Your teacher parties don't sound like ours. Ours involve serious amounts of beer and sarcasm.
There was beer and sarcasm! Lots of both, in fact.
Ours involve hard liquor and lots of sexual harassment. But look what we were wearing, we asked for it.
Beer + Sarcasm = Fun
Well, you dress like a slut, a British one, so you probably deserve the harrasment.
We actually had a discussion about that at a department meeting. If anyone walked into the Enlish office and heard us, they would be horrified, but honestly, if no one harrased me, I think I w
ould feel hurt and unloved.
We try to keep the sexual harassment to a minimum, but I think that's because we're Social Studies teachers. The English teachers have frequent sex toys parties. Like Tupperware, only with sex toys.
WT dresses like a British slut?
English teachers are like that.
WT and I met at a NEH seminar last year. Before I went, when I was having one of those inner 13-year-old moments and thought I wouldn't make any friends, my best friend said "You can be anyone you want for the month. You can be British; you can be a slut; you can be a British slut. WT is the one who saw all the action though, so she became the British slut. The comment about her dressing like a slut has to do with something she wrote about in her blog; one of the administrators at her school made a comment about how the female teachers dressed.
Oh yeah, I remember that one now.
Whenever I get dressed in the morning and feel like I might be a bit questionable professionally, I think about the teacher next door to me who is the queen of frumpiness (not you, Steve, the teacher on the OTHER side of me, you know, "Scrambles") and I decide that I ALWAYS look more professional than her. That does not, however, stop Steve from asking me if I'm on my way to yoga class or reminding me that bellbottoms went out in 1977.
The "Don't Wear to Work" pile includes all of my hooker heels and a pink tee-shirt that says "just because I like to be tied up, called bitch and spanked doesn't mean I'm a bad feminist" everything else is fair game.
I get the least action of any slut I know.
But as far as the English teachers thing goes: I think we just like to talk big. Kind of makes sense.
Wow, my raciest t-shirt says "reading is sexy." And I've been known to wear it to work.
Wonderturtle has that shirt! and the totebag.
(In my defense, I really only wear my feminist shirt to bed)
That's too bad. A shirt like that should get out more. Although THAT'S the shirt you'd probably run into parents in.
Post a Comment