The Pope in Hell

Reading: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

This book is especially relevant because as he recounts moments of terror and error in his French class, I can wipe away tears and nod my head, saying "yeah...sniff...I know what he means" because being in an 8-week, 15-unit intensive Spanish class, I do. Highlights in the book include his list of examples of the creative ways one pieces words and phrases together in order to communicate with a small, infantile vocabulary, in a foreign, unmastered language. I feel as though after every attempt at speaking an entire sentence in Spanish, I should, in English, apologize and say "really, I'm quite eloquent in English, I promise."

I feel as though I should be doing better seeing as I have a wonderful teacher who has us talk about paintings and poetry and abstract social problems. While examining two paintings of Pope Innocent, one by Bacon and one by Velasquez, I decided to lend my two cents to the conversation and proceeded to speak blasphemous, horrible words. The thing is, while I have a tendency towards irreverence, I wasn't trying to be mean or rude, I was just happy that I, for once, had the vocabulary to say what I thought. So, referring to the Bacon Piece, I said "Me think this be a picture of Pope Innocent in the Hell because, you know, he did many things bad and evil and the Inquisition was a thing in the past that was not good, you know,... the Pope in Hell."

The entire room gasped and my teacher looked at me with wide eyes and corrected my verb tenses. Apparently, my class is full of Catholics or people who think Hell is a silly place to put a Pope. Either way, I offended everyone and spent the next few minutes being very solemn and pious-looking.

I often complain to Phil that I have trouble making friends in college because I don't want to go to keggers and well, I'm just not a super outgoing person. But now, I can no longer complain. I mean, how does one make friends if one is condemning the Pope?

Me think this not a place to start good.