friday fun

i'm going back to school next month. for the first time in fifteen years. i went to an english public school. you'd think i'd've had enough. i took a couple of years off and then went to university. the tory students' vp was discovered dead drunk with paint all over himself and the brush in his hand next to slogans on the halls' walls saying 'death to the jews' and 'juden raus'. after graduation i went to work in a field nothing to do with anything i'd studied. most of the time i worked out-of-doors. i had an attack of ethics and went off to grad school. studied my religion and a bit of some others. went to work in my field. found out it wasn't what i thought it was. was miserable and unemployed for a while. now going back to school for training in a new profession.

despite all of this, watching graham chapman getting a latin lesson from john cleese not only makes me laugh, but also has me ahhhhhing sentimentally for the good old days of my own latin lessons.

btw, i spent most of my latin lessons trying to get thrown out of class. my best friend and a couple of others had been allowed to drop latin (and then made faces at me through the window), but the latin teacher thought i had the makings of a classicist. i was very fond of myths and legends as a child, and knew the difference between zeus and jove. anyway, nothing i did seemed to make a difference. at the end of the first term, however, i had a brilliant idea. i would hand in a blank exam paper, fail the course, and not have to do it any more. so i sat through the exam, having written nothing but my name on the page. the proctor kept telling me i didn't have much time left, and that i really should start writing. i did nothing. i was cool. the others thought i was cool. i was really cool :-) nu - at the end of the exam the teacher informed me that my parents would be called. i nodded gravely. i went home. the thing was, my mother had once told me the story of how she wanted out of latin at school so she handed in a blank exam paper. how could she, therefore, get mad at me for doing it?

somehow, things did not work out how i had expected them to. not only did i have to stay in the class, i had to retake the exam. my mother could not get mad at me for what i actually did, but could get very mad at me for consciously wasting a rather expensive education. *sigh*

i do still love this scene though!