My Memorable Class in High School

I took four years of Latin in high school and I have to say, it was the most memorable class for all four years. My high school was brand new and my graduating class was the first class to go all four years there. Latin one was a full class and Latin two was a full class.  By the time we got to Latin three, we were two rows in the Latin two class since there were only about 7 of us left. By the time Latin four rolled around, I was it. The only student. So, I had my row, Latin three had two rows and Latin two had about five rows of students. It was like the old one room schoolhouse- the teacher would assign work to us and then she’d teach the twos, move over to the threes and finally end up with me. I spent most of the year in silent translations- I remember distinctly hating the marking the long and short sounds in the poetry. It made zero sense to me and seemed to be busy work- in retrospect, it definitely was.

I loved the class all four years, though. We had such fun. We traveled to competitions and  I won numerous times at the district level and even once at the state level. We had a college bowl team and that was fun, we wrote and performed in plays, we goofed around and just had a blast.

I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Latin style and we won an award for it. I got to look for “Leones, tigres, et orsi, oh my”- that’s lions and tigers and bears, to you English folk.  I also got to click my heels in red sequined shoes and chant, “There’s no place like Rome.”  It was grand. Dorothy in a toga was quite fun.

We used to make up crazy stuff and post it on the board before the teacher got to class such as “ubi, oh ubi, est mea sub ubi?” which is technically not quite correct as the last ubi is not really the proper word.  But it translates to “where, oh where, is my underwear?” Don’t get your knickers in a twist, the underwear were not really missing.

Anyway, that was a fun class. Always. Except for those pesky poems.

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