{"id":5237,"date":"2018-09-30T19:50:43","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T01:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=5237"},"modified":"2018-09-30T19:53:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T01:53:24","slug":"lausbub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2018\/09\/30\/lausbub\/","title":{"rendered":"Lausbub"},"content":{"rendered":"

“You’re a silly goose,” someone in the back of the room chimed in when another student answered a question I had asked.<\/p>\n

“Hey, silly goose:<\/em> that’s what I used to call my son when he was young,” I said.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

“You know what else I used to call him?”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Lausbub<\/a>,” I said in a good German accent. “You are a lausbub!” <\/p>\n

One of the boys in the back said it out loud: “Laus boop!”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Germany?”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“Repeat after me… You: Du…<\/em>”<\/p>\n

And they repeated it.<\/p>\n

“You are: Du bist…<\/em>“<\/p>\n

And they repeated it.<\/p>\n

“You are a lausbub! Du bist ein Lausbub! <\/em>“<\/p>\n

They loved it, and the boy in the back did it with a darned good German accent, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5237"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5240,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions\/5240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}