breaking rules

the other day, i’m sitting in class (and by that i mean standing). i’m doing a lesson on food, i believe -- though that’s completely irrelevant information.

in french schools -- at least in the elementary schools -- every class room has a plethora of rulers, protractors, triangles and what-have-yous to facilitate the drawing of geometric lines, squares, circles and other things. i often use these rulers (meter sticks, if you will) as pointers... due to the overwhelming lack of pointers in the class rooms. (there’s one class where the teacher has a four foot bamboo stick. i’m highly tempted to steal it. i think she’d notice. on a side note -- since this totally isn’t already one... -- they’ve planted some bamboo shoots in front of the train station. i want to go cut one down so i can have a bamboo pointer... and maybe a walking stick too. i don’t think they’d notice.)

these rulers aren’t exactly what you’d call... sturdy. they’re plastic. they’re a meter long (just over a yard for the metrically challenged...), and really thin. (ok... not like SUPER thin... but still. thin.) this makes them ideal for flexing. you know... like a saw. (they’re not that thin...)

well... i was doing just that -- flexing -- when the stupid ruler decides to go off and break! (at approximately 3 decimeters -- that’s 30 centimeters, or just under a foot, for the metrically challenged). break i tell you! snapped in two...

naturally the classroom, half filled with 9 year olds, was very quickly completely filled with “ooooo”s and gasps and various forms of giggling.

and... of course... the next question asked (which was on subject -- this is very rare... but happened quickly in this particular instance) was: “how do you say, ‘mark broke the ruler’ in english?”

silly, silly children.

they didn’t let this go very easily. i was trying to be all nonchalant about the whole thing... but they just wouldn’t let it go.

silly, silly children.

i continued the lesson, and as it was getting time to leave (which meant that the kids went out to recess, and i waited for my next class to get back from recess), one of the boys offered to tell the teacher that he had broken the ruler while being a turd in class.

i couldn’t let that happen... he’s usually a very well behaved child. perhaps if it had been one of the actual turds... maybe. so instead, i wrote a note and left it with the carcass on the teacher’s desk. she came up to me after school and said that it was no big deal... happens all the time.

i’m not sure i completely believed her... but then, i forget this is france: kids are terrible here. wow. i would have been shot, strangled or otherwise dismembered by my mother SEVERAL times over, by the age of six and a half, if i had ever thought of being that daemonic!

besides... the gov’t pays for it all anyway... so who cares, right?