Rachel's Geekiest Moment

In college, I was a dual minor in Latin and Medieval Studies. (Geek-Strike One.) My junior year, I augmented this by talking my way into a rarely-offered, high-level class (Geek-Strike Two): Intro to Old English (Geek-Strike A GUHGILLION.)*

The class consisted of six upper-level smarty-pants, classicists, linguists, über-academic superstars, and me. I mean, I'm no dummy, but one of these guys was, like, doing a dissertation on the neuroscience of Frisian-speaking cultures, and someone else wore glasses.

Glasses.

Anyway, after we'd learned the basics—"You mean, 'Ð' is a 'thuh" sound and 'Æ' sounds like 'aaaahUH'? This language makes me sound like a cow in heat."—we started translating the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. They're really early historical documents recording what happened and when—sort of like the Christmas newsletters of Dark Ages-era bad-asses. Each year had a highlights reel like:

A.D. 453: In this year, Carysc did kill many, many, many, many, many, many Welshmen. Did we say many? Because he killed, like, A LOT. He had a feast, and then took an arrow to the face and died. His son, Æð (pronounced "Kevin") did wive, have three sons, fight the Welsh, and then die from an arrow to the face. Also, should we do something more about covering our faces? It just seems like there are so many arr—Ow! Sorry. I totally just died from an arrow to the face.

The rest of the class begged for assignments and finished them 20 seconds later and begged for more, and to be honest, I really wanted to keep up with the courseload...but. Yeah. I was already overloaded, and also, did you guys hear about those "party" things?

Let's say I wasn't always the most prepared.

On one such day of letting my sketch comedy show trump my homework, I walked into class...and right into an Old English pop quiz.

Ohno ohno ohno.

Each student was assigned a passage for an on-the-spot translation, and I sweat through my Timberlands as the six other students flawlessly tripped their way through stories of Hengist and Horsa ripping Vortigern a new one. And then it got to me.

Gulp.

A smart person would have translated the passage like this:

"A.D. 671: In this year, there was the great mortality of birds."

....but here's what I said:

"A.D. 671: In this, uh, year...um...Big Bird died?"

"BIG. BIRD. DIED."

WHAT?

Yes, friends. "BIG BIRD DIED." In one fell swoop, I made Mr. Snuffleupagus a solo act, and ticked off a huge chunk of Sesame Street.

Can you guess how Blushy McBlusherson I was? I was the laughingstock of the dweebs. The buffoon of the nerds. The dork of the dorks of the dorks.

And did I mention they made a class t-shirt out of it? Picture a crudely-drawn image of our favorite oversized Muppet with the calligraphed words, "A.D. 671: In this year, Big Bird died." over it.

I don't mean to exaggerate. Ultimately, everyone was pretty nice about it and the professor was like, "Meh, you're not going into a PhD program, like, tomorrow, so no big," but it's a humbling day when you totally fail in front of every Mega Supreme Geek in a 50-mile radius.

Ah, well. At least I had Latin to fall back on. Waaaaay less geeky, amirite?

Geek-Strike The End.

*A quick aside on why I studied The Humanities:

Math Teacher: Rachel, count to three.
Rachel: Uh. One. Um. Two?
Math Teacher: Very good.
Rachel: Uhhhm. A guhgillion?
Math Teacher: Close? [pulls out big rubber stamp that says "ENGLISH DEPARTMENT," stamps it on Rachel's face]

FIN

Anyone out there taking Greek? Or Old English??

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