Bathroom Humor

To satisfy your curiousity about the title of this blog, I will begin with a few snippets from the past week:

1) One of the German teachers at the kindergarten, while living in Minnesota apparently acquired the ability to swear in English. In German, the word "scheisse" is pretty much a literal translation of the word "shit." But in German the word doesn't have such strong connotations; it's more like "crap." So the German teacher has been occasionally exclaiming "shit!" since September. If any of the children (who are specifically placed in the kindergarten to aquire English language skills) start cursing in English, who will be most likely to take the blame?

2) Last week I was standing outside the kindergarten bathroom, waiting for a student to finish brushing his teeth and going to the bathroom before naptime when I heard a voice from inside. "Suzanne?" said the boy (often this sounds more like "Zoo-zanne?")
"Yes, Jens?" I replied, peeking into the room.
From behind the stall door Jens rather contemplatively asked, "When is the Easter bunny coming?" The things that go through the idle minds of children...

3) While three-year-old Martin and I were looking at a book together one morning, he suddenly leaped up and announced in German, "I have to poop!"
"Well, go go go then!" I ushered him toward the door. But a thought struck him and he spun around and blurted (again in German), "Wait! How do you say 'I have to poop' in English?!"

Not all of my recent experiences have involved bathroom humor, fortunately. One recent experience that is plenty humorous, but involves no bodily fluids or swearing occurred when I was taking the llama, Eddie for a walk at the zoo. The department has high hopes for Eddie. They plan to train him to be well-mannered and comfortable enough for him to be a sort of ambassador for the zoo, attending media events and visiting sick children in the hospital. For a llama to travel, tolerate crowds, and regard new situations and locations calmly, it takes some work. Part of Eddie's training for this involves just wandering the zoo with me for a change of scenery (for him, not me). During a walk last week we meandered past the elephant exhibit while Mwanna, the African elephant matron, was lazily tossing sand onto her own back. As Eddie and I passed, somehow an idea registered in Mwanna's elephantine brain. She splayed out her massive ears, threw her trunk into the air and all 11,000 lbs of her thundered toward us. The sight was enough to make my heart jump into my throat, even though I knew the moat separated me and Eddie from the freight train heading toward us. Eddie, with his somewhat challenged llama brain, did not know about the moat. Eddie only weighs about 200 lbs--a butterfly compared to Mwanna-- but 200 lbs of terrified llama bolting down the visitor's path at the zoo is still enough to drag me. It was pure luck that this occurred on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon, so no by-standers witnessed this. I managed to stay on my feet, and managed to hold onto the lead rope Eddie was attached to (both accomplishments in themselves) but I could not stop his panicked charge until well passed the giraffe house. Quality America's Funniest Home Video material.

Lastly, I would like to apologize for any past lapses in grammatic and punctuational accuracy. I should also apologize for future lapses while I'm at it. I'm convinced that learning a second language has a tendency to shake up the details of the first language. I can't place apostrophes correctly anymore, and inevitably I begin to type or write the word "house" as "hause" (a bastardization of the English and German words). Commas appear where they shouldn't and precise word choice is laborious at times. On the other hand, I have also found that some grammatical structures have begun to emerge in my German speech completely independently of my own efforts, and that is somewhat encouraging. That being said, I will now leave you to continue my study of demonstrative pronouns and the accusative case. Just kidding. I'm going to eat some frozen yogurt and watch German cartoons.