Every time my extended family gets together in upstate ny, we (the Adults) all get wasted & at least 1 giant Family Scandal comes out…..tonight is that night..
We’ve Got A Winner Folks, And It Involves Arson AND A Nun!
So apparently my aunt cecelia (not really my aunt, just the best friend of my dads cousin, whomst we also call aunt) once married a dude referred to only as Florida Asshole. He was named such because he apparently left my aunt cecelia while she was in the hospital, stole all of their stuff, and fucked off to florida. Aunt cecelia then hired a p.i. to find him, as u do, and went down to florida with my dads cousin (who was going to florida for a work trip, and had no idea Florida Asshole was there). Apparently the p.i. told aunt cecelia which city the guy was in, but hadnt found the exact address yet, so ofc aunt cecelia did what any other able bodied half insane scorned person might. She went to a costume shop, bought a full nun costume, and went door to door under the assumption that she was collecting charity. (She did, in fact, donate everything she collected. This was an important fact to her). At one of the houses, she looked in the window and noticed an awful lot of furniture that used to be hers. So she, obviously, went to a gas station and bought several cans of gasoline, threw a molotov cocktail through the front window, and began pouring gasoline over the rest of the house. At this point, Florida Asshole came outside, recognized his ex wife looking like a renegade nun sent to punish him for his sins, and began beating her. The neighbors, seeing the strange new man beating a nun in his front yard while his house was on fire, did the only sensible thing in this story and called the police. Who promptly arrested Florida Asshole for assaulting a nun. Aunt cecelia did not get arrested, came clean to her best friend, and was immediately sent back to new york with a ticket bought under my other aunt’s name. We don’t know if she still has an arrest warrant out for her in florida, and that’s tonight’s Family Scandal!
An assignment I actually wrote on the board this week:
In groups, write 2 sentences (in Latin) using only the
vocabulary in your textbook. Make sure to include:
1 irregular verb
1 imperfect verb
5 cases
BEES?
I’ll elaborate in a minute, but I need to stop laughing
first.
So I’d originally planned on a 20-minute grammar lesson,
followed by a handout to be finished in pairs, but I’d made the mistake of telling
this class about Latin Day in April and how we were encouraging them to come to
school in costume. All they wanted to do was talk about costume opportunities
(and since I would like to keep my job, I had to explain why staging Caesar’s assassination
in the middle of the lunchroom would be a Bad Idea), so I shifted gears and decided
to channel that creative/social energy into a different assignment.
After lugging them through a condensed version of the
grammar lesson on irregular verbs in the imperfect tense, I split them into
groups and pulled an assignment out of the air.
The requirements:
Write two sentences in Latin
Use ONLY vocabulary from the textbook
Include at least ONE irregular verb
Include at least ONE verb in the imperfect tense
Include 5 (out of 6, including the vocative)
cases
The goal:
To write them on the board for their ‘rival’
groups to translate
They are a competitive bunch, so I knew this would be enough
to encourage them to go All Out. But then one student raised her hand.
“Can our sentences be about bees?” she asked.
Bees. I swear this class has a thing with Bees. I hesitated.
“There are no bees in your textbook.”
“Yes, but you taught us that word.”
I had, back when this same student had asked me how to say “the
bees are suffering” for a kahoot she was writing. Granted, this same student is
planning on coming in on Latin Day dressed as Caligula’s horse, so none of this
surprises me.
I opened it up to the other ‘groups’. “What do you think?” I
asked. “Should we let them write about bees?”
“No,” said one student with a heavy sort of solemnity, looking
me dead in the eye. “We should all be required
to write about bees.”
As the rest of the class eagerly cheered and nodded in
agreement, three things occurred to me.
The word for bee, “apis”, is a 3rd-declension
i-stem noun, which they could use more practice on.
They’re going to want to describe the bees,
which means they will likely also be practicing noun-adjective agreement with a
3rd-declension i-stem noun, which they could also use more practice
on.
This could be flipping hilarious.
And so I added “BEES?” to the list.
The results:
1. apes ingentes Hannibalis ad Romam ibant. Moenia vincunt et Romanis miserum dant.
“The giant bees of Hannibal
were going to Rome. They conquer the walls and give misery to the Romans.” In hindsight the noun miseriam would have been better, but still solid. Mentions bees AND misery. Implies an AU where Hannibal brought giant bees
across the Alps instead of elephants. Carthage wins the Punic Wars. 10/10
2. Argus ignem sui amoris dare volebat ieiunis, ieiunis apibus. “Arge!” apes dicunt. “Nolumus accipere ignem tui amoris.” Argus desperat et se in mare conicit.
“Argus was wishing to give
the fire of his love to the hungry, hungry bees. ‘Argus!’ the bees say. ‘We do
not want to accept the fire of your love.’ Argus despairs and hurls himself
into the sea.” Descriptive. Tragic. Mentions fire. Has something for
everyone. Also 10/10
3. regis magna apis volabat, et volebat occidere regi. “Beeyonce,” inquit, “uxor es. Ama me.”
“The great bee of the king
was flying, and he was wishing to kill for the king. ‘Beeyonce,’ he said. ‘You
are my wife. Love me.’ ” 100/10 for Beeyonce.
Every time I see this I’m not sure if its fandom content or just a summary of what being piss drunk with your best friend is like but either way it’s Perfect
He was white, middle-aged, nothing terribly exciting. But he was very friendly and we talked the entire time about what he does (works for a company that manufactures cable) and what he was doing down here (a conference) and that segued into where we’d visited and where we’d LIKE to visit and I mentioned I wanted to move to Canada, so we talked about that—it was a good 20 minute drive.
And then we got downtown and he was like “damn, where’s this traffic coming from” and I told him it was the football season opener but not to ask me anything else because all I could tell him was football had a pointy ball.
Me: “Ask me about HOCKEY and I can tell you some stuff.”
Him: “I USED TO PLAY HOCKEY!”
So then he said he wasn’t exactly agile enough to do it anymore and I said yeah, that’s why I write about it instead and I’d just written a hockey romance.
Him: “Wait, what, you’re published? Where can I find your books??”
Me: “Well, that depends, are you okay reading gay romance?”
Him: “You mean male/male?”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “Well… I’m married.”
Me: *braced for him to have some kind of bullshit excuse about it makes him less of a man or his wife doesn’t like it*
Him: “And my husband’s name is David.”
No lie, we looked at each other like:
So then I gave him my card and he promised to look me up on FB after he’d read my stuff and told me I was “the actual best” and he was giving his husband my books and tipped me 50% the end
This whole thing started out with ‘white middle-aged male’, and ngl, I braced myself for the bad, but instead this adorable thing happened, and thank you OP. Good way to start a Monday.
Steel Phoenix Studios 