“You’re a silly goose,” someone in the back of the room chimed in when another student answered a question I had asked.
“Hey, silly goose: that’s what I used to call my son when he was young,” I said.
They looked at me. I stood there for a second, weighing whether or not I could afford the diversion from the algebra. I decided I could. (It was Friday, after all.)
“You know what else I used to call him?”
They dwell on every word about my family and my life, as if they’re gathering rare evidence that, yes teachers are human beings, after all.
“Lausbub,” I said in a good German accent. “You are a lausbub!”
One of the boys in the back said it out loud: “Laus boop!”
So I proceeded to explain how it was that I came by that expression, how my mother used to use it on us, and how she in turn picked it up when she was studying in Germany.
“Germany?”
I explained how she was an exchange student, and in her family the parents would call the young children lausbubs when they were being rascals. And then I taught my algebra students a bit of German.
“Here’s how you say it,” I said. I explained that German has a formal and an informal “you” just like Spanish, and that you use the informal with children so that was what we were going to do.
“Repeat after me… You: Du…”
And they repeated it.
“You are: Du bist…“
And they repeated it.
“You are a lausbub! Du bist ein Lausbub! “
They loved it, and the boy in the back did it with a darned good German accent, too.