tue 05 may 2009 04:33:46 — witte de withstraat
das zimmer ist groß as all hell
in 1974 or so, in mrs gammon's german class, we had a cool textbook with german grammar, wortschatz and some sentence examples. one of which was "das zimmer ist gross und hell". the room is big and bright. which sounds awfully optimistic doesn't it. but the guy sitting behind me on the right side of the classroom, michael w, translated it to "this room is gross as all hell." that made me laugh, i thought it was funny. he was a friend of mine, a sharer in the really-not-belonging.
a year or two later michael and some of his friends picked me up somewhere, i forget from where, and gave me a ride home to our house on kirk street. he asked me how my father was doing. i said "he died last year." and michael said "good, that guy used to freak me out."
by the way, mrs gammons couldn't really speak german to save her life, it just seemed that way at the time. her husband was the art teacher, and he treated me like shit until she said something to him about how maybe i was okay after all, then he started to be decent to me. as swiper de vos says on dora: "veel te laat!"