This post is for Nancy, inspired by her High School French post but also relating to a prior theme that several of us were discussing (synchronicity, or the Baader-Meinhof Syndrome, link courtesy of Flippy). A little over a week ago, for no conscious reason that I could discern, the song "Late Night Double Feature" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show was stuck in my head. I hadn't thought of RHPS in ages, hadn't thought of that song for YEARS, but to get it dislodged I dug out my CDs and listened to it. Then today, Nancy has a blog post that starts off about language, French to be exact, and segues into this horrible French teacher we had in high school who went to a RHPS midnight showing with me and a bunch of other kids from Drama Club. (I was Magenta, in case you're curious.)

The interesting thing I discovered, thanks to that post, was the vagaries of selective memory. I read Nancy's post at work, and the whole time I was sitting in traffic trying to get home, I was planning the blog post I'd do for her tonight. I was going to take a picture of my high school French text, which I still have, and also take a picture of the formerly blank pages in the back of the book. Nancy and I spent most of French translating insults and obscene phrases into French and writing them down in the back of my textbook. Actually, they weren't OBSCENE obscene, but what passed for obscene in the mind of a 16-year-old girl in the mid-80s: ta mere (yo' mama), fu toi, voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?, etc. And as Nancy reminded me, anything reminiscent of S&M was doubly hilarious: frappez-moi, fouettez-moi, etc. The shocking things we'd written in my textbook were the very reason I still have it: I was unable to turn it in at the end of the year with such filth written all through it - we might have gotten DETENTION! (dun-dun-DUNNNN!) so I pretended I'd lost it and paid for the book instead.

I couldn't wait to show the blogsphere that many of those phrases were in Nancy's handwriting - she was far better behaved than me, sure, but also better at French, heh heh heh. So I arrived home and, as expected, my high school French textbook was there on the languages bookshelf, but when I opened it...it was pristine. Not an ink blot sullied the pages, other than my name on the flyleaf in pink glitter pen. Nothing! The weird thing is, I called Nancy to discuss this and before I got to the part where the book was unbesmirched, she was laughing about it too! She remembered it as well, and remembered it being MY textbook - not hers or both of them or some other friend's. I thought I'd done the same thing to my English Lit and American Lit textbooks, but though both are sitting on my shelf, with the high school property stamp on the inside front cover and my name scrawled on there, there isn't any graffiti or sarcasm or teacher insults preventing me from turning them in - so why on earth did I pay for them and keep them, if there wasn't the threat of punishment compelling me? Anyway, the odd thing is that Nancy remembered it the same way I did, but clearly we were both wrong.

Selective memory there, and also in other things that her post brought back. As she mentions, she remembers all this detail about Mlle Stanley, but nothing that she learned in her class. I remember the most microscopic details about her, other teachers, students I knew peripherally, but I can't remember big things that were really important. I know I took AP Calculus because I exempted basic college math because of it, but I have no memory of the cute little Calc teacher Doris that Nancy describes. (Nancy didn't take Calculus, but that's another story). I remember that after one homecoming dance, a bunch of us stayed the night at this girl Melanie's house, and she had a pool, and all sorts of stuff that happened that night, but I have no idea what guy I was at the dance with, although I know I was with someone because I wouldn't have gone alone. I remember the first name, last name and Football Jock Nickname of this guy with whom I had several classes, among them AP History and AP English, but I can NEVER remember the name of his best friend - which wouldn't be so bad except I dated that best friend for, oh, like a year and he took me to the prom. But every time we talk about him, I have to ask Nancy what his dang name was! (I'd write it down here, for posterity, but I've already forgotten it since 7PM. M, I think it starts with M...)

I was kinda disappointed because I knew I'd find all sorts of funny, forgotten stuff scrawled in my French book, but I didn't. Alan suggested maybe I'd razored the pages out, which I thought was unlikely, but I showed it to him anyway. Here is Alan reading my high school French book:

He was reading the chapter on going to the Boulangerie/Patisserie, and said in utter, scornful disgust, "You can just look at this fucker and tell that he smells bad."

When I laughed, he elaborated, "Look at that HAIR! You can tell he hasn't washed it in like, six weeks!" Here is the garcon in question:

Then he voiced his displeasure at the chick with the stroller: "And look at the huge bandage on that kid! What could have happened to him? Crappy French parenting no doubt! See how that woman has all her Galoises and stuff piled in back of his stroller, probably pitched him out three or four times on the hard cobblestones of Rue de Fromage!" Here's a closer shot of the bandaged rat de couverture:

Alan's outrage was hilarious to behold. My disappointment in the lack of schoolgirl hijinks was far outweighed by my enjoyment of Alan making fun of the French, or as I call them, my beloved fromage mangeant des singes de reddition.