Les perles du jour

Les perles are, literally, pearls or beads, and is used to describe the gems of things that people say. Teaching in primary school, my students don't really have a big enough range of vocabulary nor grammatical skills to really ad-lib much in English, which means that their production is usually either accurate or utter gibberish. None of that funny in-between language that either means something crazy or means nothing but still makes sense.

Though last week when correcting 5th-grade written evaluations, I had one response that literally had me laughing out loud. This particular perle belongs to Camille, a smart, sweet, hard-working girl, who regularly produces work without a single fault.

Do you have any pets?
Yes, I am a hamster.

Maybe I had inhaled too many fumes from my correcting pen, but I thought it was hilarious.

Then today, in the same 5th-grade class, we were reviewing family vocabulary. I was in the middle of assigning homework when Adem raised his hand. In French he double-checked that "mother" means mère, and went on to share with the class, in French, that there's some comedian that has a DVD called "Motherf*cker." Fortunately for me, no one in the class has yet learned that vocabulary gem, and the moment passed as just another "English words are everywhere" sharing session. I, however, could hardly control my laughter when I turned around to write their homework on the board.

Kids say the darnedest things, n'est-ce pas?