We're going to post long funny stories on the weekends. So, if this your first time at Barely Legal: The Blog, skip it and start at the beginning of the blog for Law School Humor. I strongly suggest 'The 9/11 story we didn't hear'.
In 5th grade, I was a really bad student. I lived in Canada and was in this program called “French emersion” which meant my entire classroom experience was in French. I had a really hard time with French. I guess I wasn't motivated because I had never been to France or even met a French person whose full time job wasn't teaching me French.
I was, however, a very funny student. I remember the teacher turning her back and I made a giant farting noise. When she spun around she looked right at me and I just said, "Excuse me". What was she going to do, embarrass herself by putting me through an inquisition over whether I had really farted or not? The kids laughed and she stood there impotent in the face of my facility at mimicking bodily functions.
I like to think that I was helping her, though. She was originally from Paris and was now teaching English kids in a Canadian suburb. When she was young, making out with some guy in a beret under the Eiffel Tower after eating a gourmet meal, she couldn't have been hoping that this was the way her life would turn out. My fart was a wake up call! When I pressed my palms to my lips and exhaled it said, "You don't want to be here and we don't want you here either!" Hopefully, she took my advice the right way, but I doubt it.
One day, we finally had an assignment that wasn't in French. A bunch of students from the local University came over and were teaching us about how environmental issues were very complicated. This was way too advanced for 5th graders. They were trying to teach us that many different groups had a stake in the environment, loggers, city-dwellers, Native Canadians, etc. Each group with an interest in the environment was supposed to be represented by a couple of kids. I was assigned to the Native Canadian group.
Now, keep in mind I was living in Vancouver, Canada, at the time which has politics to the left of a hippy commune. In Vancouver, the typically impression of Native Canadians was that they were noble savages at best and hapless victims of the White Man's cruelty at worst. They were able to have these one dimensional attitudes because no Native Canadians lived in Vancouver (Canada's one area of temperate climate was conveniently not allocated to them).
I, however, had just moved from Saskatchewan which was chock full of Native Canadians. People in Saskatchewan typically thought of them as just guys named "Joe Red Deer," at best, or a social liability, at worst. Reruns of “F-Troop” and institutional racism did not make me very enlightened and I carried those values with me to Vancouver.
I sat with my group as we discussed what we should do to represent Native Canadians in this hypothetical environmental quarrel. I assured my group that I knew all about Indians and that I would be happy to be the designated speaker.
After our discussions, all the designated speakers lined up at the front of the class and then one of the fresh faced college kids said, "Why don't you kids introduce yourselves?" The introductions went, thusly:
"Hi, I'm Timmy. I'm a logger."
"Michelle. I live in the city"
"I'm Cathy. I work for the environment"
And then it was my turn...
"How!" I raised my palm open and upwards as I'd seen every cartoon Native American ever do. "I'm Big Chief Eat-a-Fish"
One of the college kids then stood up and said, "Stop".
There was then a long discussion between the college kids and the teacher while we sat around. Then one of the college kids told us and that this activity was cancelled due to "racism". The college kids left in a fit of moral indignation. They would have been happy to know that I had received the perfect punishment, the teacher just went back to her lesson plan and I was forced to spend the rest of the day conjugating French verbs.
