eester plans

negotiated another split holiday. been a long time since I've spent an entire Easter up in the mountains. not that I don't love our little cabin, (I do. fervently) but there are always things I'm attending. like The Gathering. and, more recently, the Inferno festival. =)

so, since Callie is working on Saturday, and neither of us would really enjoy enduring the train ride separated from one another, we're going up Sunday afternoon. arriving around midnight, going straight to the base camp at my late aunt's (now my uncle's, her brother) farm.

so the plan is to stay up there until Thursday, when we're going back here to clean up this place for guests, vorspiels etc.

and then all hell breaks loose on Friday. =)

but I'd better get rid of this cough/cold/flu/bronchitis/emphysema/WTFevah first.

damn. remember one time I coughed so hard my shoulder bone hurt for weeks. bah. =)
(but I don't complain. won't complain. hate complaining about own diseases in hopes of sympathy. trying not to make myself guilty of the same thing)

the conversation might have gone something like this:

and the middle aging teacher stood ready poised with the chalk on the board, nodding expectingly at me.

"good!" he exclaimed. "so, what else did your group find were defining characteristics of the Haugian movement?" {an influential Norwegian pietistic Christian movement from the turn of the eighteenth century, named after its founder Hans Nielsen Hauge}

me, scanning the short list from my group, decided to proudly spring the best one right away:

"forgoing fun."[1]

and the chalk halted on its white-trailed tour of the blackboard.

"what?"

a balding head, with narrow, scowling eyes, turned my way.

"maybe you'd care to elaborate on that."

"well," I continued somewhat lamely, "seeing as they wouldn't allow playing games, dancing, drinking and stuff. fun stuff. and they were against it."

"is drinking fun? very well. you would know, I suppose," my teacher retorted harshly as he turned again to note our "finding". the chalk resumed squeaking its maddening protests against the board, being tortured to new extremes.

teacher: "so you think God simply wouldn't allow them to have fun, then?"

me: "naw. they thought so."

teacher: "is that it now? do you perchance know one of them since you're so certain of this?"

me: "no, I don't, sir, or anyway I think I don't. pietists have become hard to spot nowadays. marked for extinction, if you ask me. but my mother tells me she never ever saw her pious great-grandfather smile even once. and he was even a serious psalm writer, featured in the national psalmbook and all."

teacher: "oh, is that so, is it? so what would your great-great-grandfather have told your mother about having fun, I wonder?"

me: "nothing much, I hope, sir. he died before she was born."

utter triumph. that's how it should have ended.

I was eleven. or maybe a couple of months into twelve. our history teacher was the principal of our school. the headmaster. my parents' colleague. and our neighbor. and the father of my best female friend at the time. and a political conservative. and chairman of the local church council.

I never could abide his biting sarcasms towards myself and my fellow pupils, though, even if I seemed to be the only one who noticed them at all. at least early on.

I have no idea why I started thinking of that now, and made up the rest of the showdown.

in reality I blushed and sat down after my first feeble attempts of explanation. but he did write it down. respected me that much, I guess.

we would be out to get one another on a daily basis by the time I finished seventh grade. but it was a war of mutual respect, I think. without claiming too much. after all, I did head the pupil's council, and we both had a sense of humor. once we discovered it and remembered to put it to use.

I remember I really disliked him back then. but he was only being himself. I'm sure he hated his job at times. does it feel strange, the notion that I might dislike somebody?

I must have changed.

[1] - it could have been translated "hating humor" as well. the original Norwegian was "mot moro". I liked the way it sounded.