French to Me Deux ( Lay Zay Lev)

We knew one another. We knew how to break. We all knew that Toddler was a sleeper so we slept. Out and out, passive aggressive sleeping was the quietest and safest form of dispect especially for sleeper teachers. Sleepers would enter the class, start reading the textbook aloud while everybody in the class went right to sleep. We had an unwritten deal, they wouldn't wake us and we wouldn't break them.

The only teacher we didn't know about was Mr. Hennings. He was brand new. He had no rep. We would have to discover that idiosynchracy before we could take advantage of it. So the first week was quiet as the nightmare smoldered before slowly breaking into flame; a spark at first.....then briefly a campfire until finally the whole forrest would be on fire. We crouched like hidden tigers.

It all started when Hennings wrote a vocabulary word on the board. The word was les eleves which meant "the stairs". Buzz Moynhan started the problem when he asked for a pronunciation. Hennigs very carefully and emphatically (way too emphatically) pronounce Lay Zay Lev to which Moynihan asked "are you sure the "Lay" is not pronounced "Lez". Since we had no girls in our classes and since we were all exploding with hormones and reference to women or sex always got a great laugh out of everybody so we chortled at both "lay" and "lez" and waited for Hennings to fall inot the trap. He tried to explain the use of articles to describe singular and plural as well as to differentiate between male and female. Since he has spelled "les" correctly which read kinda like "lez" and sounded like "lay", a distracting question and answer volley began about why "lez" would be masculine and "lay" would be feminine and wouldn't it make sense if it were the other way around etc. As you might imagine, the discussion included as many overemphasized usages of "lay" and "lez" as could be expressed while hiding under the fake legitimacy of misundertanding. Some of the questions cntered around the concept of "stairs' whether "stairs was masculine or feminine and did you have to climb the stairs before you use "lez" or "lay"?  Over and over again Hennings kept saying "Lay Zay Lev' and each overemphasis produced immature, sexist snarkling.

From that day forward things grew progressively worse for Hennings, which to us meant more fun. He had earned the nickname that he would carry for the rest of his short teaching career, the nickname that I remember him by today .....Lay Zay Lev.

Our routine was established. Late lunch followed by digestion and sleeping in Toddler's class until we perked up, prepared our farts and waited like wolves for Lay Zay Lev to 
'j'entre dans la sal de classe" or whatever. As soon as he walked into the classroom, he would be greeted by a volley of explosive gas attacks which he labeled as "commotion". He wondered how had created the "distraction". At first nobody volunteered but as the weeks wore on, when he asked about the commotion "we all raised our hands and explained it all with one word which we all chanrted in unison with ahelpless hrug of our shoulders

That word was "lunch".

That was how French class invariably began until we finally broke it and him broke it.

(Stay tuned)