Blue Booties and Pink Booties

     Ninth grade was the year for picking a foreign language to begin learning. With thoughts of majoring in science and possibly going on to med school, I picked Latin. What a great choice! Mrs. Bucher was the Latin I teacher – she was always cheerful and, since Latin is so different from English, she was patient with us.

     Remember your blue booties and your pink booties!

     A Latin noun can have different endings depending on if it is the subject of a sentence, the direct object, the indirect object, or the object of a preposition! And it has different endings whether it is singular or plural or whether it is masculine, feminine, or neuter, hence Mrs. Buchner's quote about the booties. We are kind of used to different endings for verbs in English – but now we had to learn endings for verbs and nouns!

     I thought I was a fairly good English student. I knew what prepositional phrases are and the difference between direct objects and sentence subjects – but it was not until Latin class that I really learned about indirect objects and the different ways they are phrased in English I gave the kids some lunch/I gave lunch to the kids. Verbs and tenses became richer as we learned about them in Latin. Prepositions have so many nuances!

     English was now so much more fun and has been ever since.

     When my girls were small, their father and I tried to instill in them a love of biology – their parents were both scientists afterall – why wouldn't they have the genetic make-up to pursue science also? But neither daughter seemed to be heading in that direction. So when it came time to pick a foreign language, I decided not to push anything. But while in the midst of discussing the choices for Sarah – I happened to say very humbly, “I took Latin in school and it helped my English a great deal.” I was not advising it – just relating my own experience.

     Ultimately, not only did both girls take as much Latin as they possible could in middle and high school, Amanda actually taught it in high school, as a class assistant and ultimately the primary teacher as Coach faded more and more into the background, and Sarah and Amanda majored in Latin in college – Sarah with a dual major of Latin and English, and Amanda with a triple major of Latin, Music, and Classics! They learned so much more Latin than I was ever exposed to – I remember Sarah interpreting poems in Latin and learning poetic structures that only pertain to Latin – those poems would have been way over my head had I taken Latin IV in high school!

     Special aside here and it should probably be a separate post – Sarah loved her high school Latin teacher, but he was taking grad classes in administration and when he got his degree, at the same time that Sarah was graduating high school – the teacher was offered a job in the main office, and he scooped it right up. At the rehearsal for the graduation ceremony – outside at the football stadium at the school, the Latin teacher approached Sarah to ask about a missing textbook. Sarah verbally lit into him! She accused him of selling out – going after the dollar when the students need him in Latin. Because he thought making more money for his family was so important, people like Sarah's sister would be stuck with an inferior teacher for Latin – and that just isn't right – how could he let people down like that when they needed him in the classroom? The teacher was so shocked at the attack that he turned around and walked away without clearing up the textbook issue. (The book had been returned – he was mistaken about it being missing.)

     When Sarah got home after the rehearsal and told us what had happened, we worried that she might not get to graduate! But Mr. B did not keep her from her diploma. Sarah got to continue Latin throughout college, including a trip to Rome; Amanda did indeed have not-as-great teachers, but did have the opportunity to do the teaching herself, continue Latin in college and a trip to Rome also. And Sarah probably would have a change of heart these days considering Mr. B's decision to better his lot in life for the sake of his family – but she is right that his leaving the classroom was a sad loss for the school's Latin lovers.

     Amazing to think that a language that is mocked by everyone else as dead, has been such a big part of mine and my daughters' lives!

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