For the Rest of the Day I will Only Speak French

I used to spend my college summers working at The Exploration Summer Program.  It was split in to different age groups - I worked in the Intermediate program, with middle-schoolers.  It was at Wellesley College.  The first two years I worked in the office with this office manager who drove me crazy!  I don't even remember why, I'm sure she was perfectly lovely, but I was 20 and invincible and she rubbed me the wrong way.  My best Explo friend Laura and I pushed it just about as far as we could while still getting our work done and having a blast in the meantime.

Anyway one day I was SO annoyed by Liz that I decided it was time for some serious acting out.  I took out a blank name tag and wrote on it "For the rest of the day I will only speak french" and put it on.  Liz didn't speak french.  Neither did I, but she didn't know that, and I spoke enough to get by.  So every time a kid came in, I spoke broken french.  Every time Liz asked for something, I spoke broken french.  Every time another staff member came looking for something, I spoke broken french.  I think I even refused to answer the phones that day, because who wants to call a summer program at Wellesley College and speak to someone speaking broken french?  I was a pain in the butt, but I was reasonable.  Anyway everyone got a great laugh out of it, except Liz, which after all was my ultimate goal.  Mission accomplished.

My point of this whole thing is that it's the last day of the kids' school break where we've all been cooped up with a sick limping Mom negotiating with 2 pre-teen boys each day about Wii, movies, TV time, who touched who, who crossed the invisible line, who said shut-up to who....you get it.  It's been a long week.

And because of this...for the rest of the day I will only speak french.