The Death of Pencil Cases

I've survived my first week back at school, which is actually a huge deal considering that many tragedies have ensued from stampedes that have lost control, and stampeding French children who all want to hug you and kiss you and scream Bonne année!! at you as soon as you walk in the door is not as cute as it may seem, but on the contrary, very terrifying.  But that aside, it's been a productive week.  My kids now know how to say what they're wearing, although I got into an argument with a boy who insisted that he was wearing a sweater when he was clearly just wearing a shirt.  In fact, there was a lot of confusion about sweaters, and also sweatshirts, because most of the boys were wearing zip-up track suit jackets which are neither sweaters nor sweatshirts.  I had not been prepared for that.  Neither had I been prepared for how hilarious it is when French people try to pronounce, "I am wearing socks," because socks definitely sounds like something much dirtier when they say it with their accent.  However, I saved them from major embarrassment by not teaching them the word "pants," as apparently that means underwear in British English.  This explains Amelia's giggling fits whenever I say that I have to change my pants.  No language is safe for me anymore.


Being back in France after two weeks of speaking my beautiful native tongue in England has not been as hard as I had expected it to be.  Okay, so my first day back at school was a complete joke, but I think that was due to a lack of sleep more than anything.  But it turns out that I haven't forgotten everything I've learned and I think that my French actually has improved after letting it stew undisturbed in my unconscious.  Along with cheese and wine, the French language seems to improve with age.  Maybe I should go sit in a cask in a cool cellar for a few months and see what happens.

But sometimes, I still find myself at a complete loss.  Yesterday, I was browsing DVDs at the library and spotted the spine of one of my favorite movies: North by Northwest.  I pulled it out and sure enough, there was Cary Grant running through a field with a crop-duster following closely behind.  Yet the title in French had me utterly mystified: The Death of Pencil Cases.  La Mort aux Trousses.  I stared at it for a long time, trying to remember any pencil case-centric scenes in the Hitchcock classic, preferably where they are thrown from a train, or shot at point-blank (or à bout portant, as I just learned).  But nothing came to mind.  I gave up, and when I got back home, I looked up the translation.  Apparently, when used as an idiom, la mort aux trousses means "Death is following at his heels."  Now I just wish I hadn't looked it up at all, because how you get that phrase from "The death of pencil cases" is beyond my comprehension.

In English news, whoever is in charge of picking dictionary.com's Word of the Day has clearly taken up smoking crack.  Yesterday's word was katzenjammer.  Today's is sockdolager.  As in, after my night of heavy drinking, I woke up with a sockdolager of a katzenjammer.   I feel sorry for anyone who has to learn English.