*If I had excelled at Latin, maybe I would have been able to write that title in Latin. OH WELLZORZ. At least I am good at Internet speak.

Ever since our lunch with Todd & Brittany last weekend, I have been reminiscing about my old Latin class in high school. I knew I had a picture somewhere and I found it!! This must have been from sophomore year. That’s me bottom row, second.

Some interesting facts:

• The last girl on the bottom row is my friend Liz of LAKE CHAUTAQUA FAME!!! The girl above her is Kim, who was also there that weekend! We were super close in middle school. I’m still in touch with Liz but lost touch with Kim after I left Facebook.
• If this had been a group picture from freshman year, you’d have seen sophomore-at-the-time BECKY LEE, who I played tennis with as well BUT also was the first runner-up in Survivor history! She was a really great person from what I remember and it looks like she went on to do good, meaningful work in DC. I love that for her!
• I’m still social media friends with 6 people in this picture.
• The first guy in the back row convinced me to stick the foil part of a gum wrapper in an electrical socket that same year and it made the lights blow out in our homerun. HE GOT IN TROUBLE, NOT ME. He also signed my yearbook by saying something about teaching me about the flow of electricity. If you say so, Vince. He was also one of like a million valedictorians because our graduating class was so fucking smart.
• I also was smart (not that level, but I was in advanced math and sciences, against my will) but Latin was my achilles heel. I was so good at the vocab portion, loved those quizzes, loved the history aspect of it, but I was SO BAD AT THE DECLENSIONS. Literally, I sucked so bad, like I had a learning disability. It was actually bringing my GPA down because I struggled every time we had a test. At the end of every year, there was this big exam that we were required to take in order to…get something. At first I thought it was a membership to the Junior Classical League but I found two membership cards in my name for that, so it must have been something else because I failed to achieve this in 9th and 10th grade. Finally, at the end of 11th grade, knowing I wasn’t going to be taking Latin for a fourth year (barely anyone did!), the guy in the last row, 4th over was like, “JESUS CHRIST, HERE” and let me copy off of him :) I distinctly remember this because we took the test not in our regular classroom but a room that was used for study halls and whose real purpose is not remembered by this author, but it had long rows of tables on shallow steps that went up to the back of the room. I was sitting next to him in the back row and it was easy for cheatin’.

• Our teacher, Ms. Fiore, was actually teaching us at a college level. She was REALLY INTO LATIN, YOU GUYS. She was also very serious and we had a love/hate relationship. I think I was just too much for her. I remember this one time she had told us something, I can’t even remember what it was now but apparently it was told to us in confidence, and for some reason I had let it slip to the substitute teacher we had in English that year while the regular teacher was on sabbatical. Her name was Miss Ali, she was young, also worked as staff/security at concerts at Starlake Pavilion, and hated me because she fell off a horse that year and I parodied the incident in a group video.* Surprisingly, she did not find that cute! Anyway, whatever this was that Ms. Fiore had said, I repeated to Miss Ali and it apparently set her off and she confronted Ms. Fiore about it, which prompted Ms. Fiore to give me a stern “WHAT I SAY IN THIS ROOM STAYS IN THIS ROOM” talking to, like Latin Fight Club. I feel like it had something to do with an opinion related to women’s rights.
  • *Oh you better believe I still have that video –  it was about Longfellow and themed off of The Real World. I even went around and had random people in the wild read a line from the opening of the Real World, modified to fit our English video lol #dorkalert. The part where I was mocking Miss Ali’s accident was one of the Real World “confessionals.” I had bloody gauze wrapped around my head and was crying about how I was just trying to read some Longfellow poems when my horse threw me off. Then I’m clobbering down a hallway on crutches, crying, “SOMEONE GET ME MY LONGFELLOW, I NEED TO READ LONGFELLOW.” We also had a Longfellow birthing scene with me walking in the background with a sign advertising my favorite syndicated TV show on FX, Vega$. It was very irreverant. Everyone involved got an A but I got a vindictive C even though I brainstormed the entire concept and wrote the whole fucking script AND FILMED IT AND EDITED IT, BUT COOK ON, MISS ALI, WITH YOUR SMUG VENGEANCE GRADING SCALE.
• At the end of junior year, our Latin class had a cook-out at LARGE FIELD* or whatever it’s called and I have pictures somewhere but can’t find them. I just remember I looked totally shitty and had my hair in a ponytail which was a rarity because I LOOK SHITTY IN PONYTAILS but for some reason, I really thought…
  • *OK it wasn’t called that, but it was in the “Large” area of town off of Rt 885. I typed in JEFFERSON HOSPITAL and clicked on the little map that came up because I know it’s somewhere out there but nothing was showing up so Henry came over and peered over my shoulder to inspect my detective work once he realized it involved MAPS and DIRECTIONS. “What map are you even on? Stupid Maps dot com?? Go to Google Maps.” Wow, apologies Sgt. GPS. Jesus. Google maps is much more informative but it tells me that it’s called AE REILLY MEMORIAL PARK and honey booboo that is NOT what we were calling it back then??? That doesn’t even ring the rustiest, most distant bell in my head. Oh well, I don’t care anymore. 
• Lastly, and this is the best part, I decided that for senior year, I would take Spanish because all of my friends who took Spanish LOVED it and the teacher. GUESS WHAT. MS FIORE DECIDED TO ALSO TEACH SPANISH THAT YEAR SO I FUCKING HAD HER AGAIN AND DID NOT ENJOY SPANISH ONE BIT. It was fun being a senior in a class of freshmen though and I will say that after three years of Latin, Spanish was a cool walk in a park, stopping to sniff the flowers, eating berries out of the apron that I am inexplicably wearing in this daydream scenario.