Send in the Clowns

I walked into school Monday morning, said hello to the principal while we did our usual cheek kisses, and as I started to walk away she said to me as if an afterthought had just occurred to her: "Oh Laura!  Do you know about the clowns?"

Normally, when people ask me questions like, "Do you know about the clowns?" I assume that there's been some misunderstanding on my end.  In reality, they're usually asking me something like, "Do you know that the photocopier is broken?" in which case, I respond, "Oui," even if I didn't completely understand the question, because sometimes it's just easier to say yes and get on with things, like trying to make copies on a broken photocopier and wondering why nobody told you the stupid thing was broken.  In this case however, if I said that yes, I knew about the clowns, I had a bad feeling that this would get me into an even more absurd and confusing situation later.  Before I let myself get carried away with the image of clowns chasing me through the hallways of the elementary school with kids cheering them on, I said,  "I'm sorry, what?"

The principal slowly repeated the question, overarticulating, apparently interpreting my confusion to be caused by the language barrier and not by the idea of clowns running around the school on a Monday morning.  "There are three clowns here," she continued.  "Don't be surprised if they come and disrupt your classes."  Considering this a sufficient enough warning, she went back into her office.

Nobody else mentioned the clowns all morning, except for one of the teachers who said that our Thursday morning English class was going to have to be canceled, "à cause de les clowns."  With no further explanation, he walked away.  So not only were the clowns going to be here all week, I was also clearly stuck in a French absurdist play.

My first class of the day was thankfully clown-free.  We learned "I like/ I don't like," with different types of food and took a class survey to determine the most popular.  Bread unanimously won the vote, beating out even chocolate and pizza.  Even eight-year-olds in France are so... French.   

Yet when I walked into my next lesson, I found myself witnessing three clowns wreaking havoc in the classroom.  Kids were screaming with laughter as one clown madly clicked through the powerpoint presentation the class had been in the middle of before they had been interrupted by the traveling circus; another clown was running in and out of the classroom with handfuls of tissues claiming to have kid allergies; the third was the straight (wo)man, trying to keep her companions in line while picking on the normally uptight teacher, who was red in the face from laughter.  Since the teacher is usually such a disciplinarian, I had to hand it to him for playing along so eagerly.  Even as one of the clowns started confiscating the essays the students had been working on, and crumpling them up and throwing them away, the teacher just stood in the corner giggling.  (I shouldn't have been so surprised.  Mimes, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mr. Bean-- characters that no one finds funny anymore after the age of eight-- are idols in France.  My theory is that because the French seem so concerned with keeping up appearances and behaving in the socially-accepted manner that they find a release in these comedians who are able to make such fools of themselves.)  

After another few minutes, the teacher shooed them out and the clowns said their goodbyes and shuffled out of the classroom, closing the door behind them.  No sooner had the door shut, then did the teacher's smile quickly melt off his face.  He pulled his students' crumpled essays from the trash can, held them up and said, "You're going to have to rewrite these."