Bosoms

Have you ever had a test or a class or just a day that you couldn’t dread anymore if you tried? Like you could sit in a corner and try to add horrifying things and just can’t make it any scarier or any more horrible. Oh, I have. Oh, boy, I have. I’m in Latin. Great language, interesting culture, dead and all, but, ya know, still impressively cool. Well, I’m in 5^th semester Latin, which means Virgil’s Aeneid is my own little personal hell.

 Which, day to day class isn’t that bad. Normally I walk in and sit down and wow the class with my impressively witty comments, stupefy the teacher with my intelligence, and then try not to make eye contact and just force myself through the next hour. It’s really not too bad. I mean, wooden skewers under my fingernails would probably suck more….or maybe that nifty waterboarding thing I’ve heard so much about. The ungodly, unspeakably awful part of Latin comes in the form of the tests.

 This particular little delicious bite of hell was a brain melting 600 lines. Not that we have to translate 600 lines in one class period. I would just give up. I would quit school, become a hobo, and maybe earn my money turning tricks in a rural town in Oklahoma. Ya know, do something that would make my dear ole momma proud. 

No, none of that. We just have to study and memorize 600 lines. I say memorize and not just like, learn to translate, because honestly no one COULD know 600 lines of Latin vocab. If you did the entire class would probably be forced by the Geneva Convention to beat you up and take your lunch money for your own good. So I, the unholy studying terror, spent my lovely Halloween weekend translating again and again and again little bits of the funniest phrases you’ve ever heard, all in the hopes of catching that elusive “good grade.”

I only give candy to kids who can say trick or treat in latin. 

Now, most would think that in hell the things you would have to translate would be horrible and just god awful. Like maybe they would star a quadriplegic kitten who liked to play in the acid factory or something. Nope. What hell actually does is royally mess with your head. You have to translate things that really, in all honesty tickle your particular funny bone. I’ve decided to share with you my particular favorite so far this semester: “He seeks to the queen, this one clings to him with her eyes; she clings to him with her whole bosom, and meanwhile Dido fondles him in her bosom, and knowing not how great a god settles on the miserable one…”

Now, because I know any sane person thinks that particular quote really makes no sense at all, I’ll translate my translation. Basically there’s the “boy;” best we can guess he’s about 12, but honestly he could be like 5—we don’t really know, and he’s goin to hang out the with Queen, good ole Dido, and basically be his dad, Aeneas‘s, wingman. Honestly, worst wingman-ship I’ve ever heard of. I mean as  a little boy he not only gets to sit in his dad’s lady love’s lap, which honestly as a 5 year old is not that weird, but then she clings with her eyes…weird right? It gets worse…and honestly this is the part I think should be taught in schools. She clings with her bosom. Girls just don’t have this skill anymore. I can honestly say that’s a lost art, and I for one would like to see it come back. Oh, and then there comes the fondling. Pedophilia always makes for a good day in Latin.

Now, as a public service announcement, I must admit that not every day in Latin has a bosom section. I mean, there are a lot of bosoms and quite a lot of really awkward situations, but it’s a day by day thing. Some days you get sections about bees that no one understands, or maybe a section on Fame that you think is really dumb, but some days, and those days are magical, you get a bosom or a wedding marked by shrieking nymphs watching two bad ass people havin storm sex in a cave.

With all that sex and creepiness, you’d think I’d just jump at the chance to test my knowledge of the weird and unholy. That’s where hell gets you. Now you have to take these weirdnesses that you loved so and you have to permanently etch them into your brain. Picture the creepy hand cutting pen Umbridge inflicts upon Harry in the 5^th book. Now, instead of something bad ass like “I must not tell lies,” you have to write bits about bosom clinging and pedophilia and screaming nymph sex. That just warps a kid. Warps them good. And, really. the worst part is when people ask you what you’re studying, and you can’t just be like, “Oh, ya know, pedophilia, death, screaming sex, and kingdoms.” You have to blush and be like, “Oh, just Latin. Boring stuff, you know.” It’s torture, I say, cruel and ungodly torture.