Record and Scraper-Breaking Ice

Every few years some kind soul takes pity on me and my miniscule salary and gives me a car. For the past few times it has been my friend Phil. This is ironic because he earns about the same amount that I do. But I digress.

Phil's latest offering was a 1992 Toyota Corolla (he just doesn't like the messiness of selling old cars). Having been raised in a world that melded pastors in black robes and foraging through other people's garbage, I happily accepted. I have been driving it for a little over a year now, and it's not very pretty. The incidents with the skunk and the deer didn't help.

Though we have a two-car garage, I'm not very good at putting all the vehicles inside (refer to upbringing). So when the ice storm hit on Saturday, my Corolla was parked stolidly in the driveway. I had no need to use it on Sunday since I was busy giving the CHEX TALK and trying frantically to grade papers and do lesson plans before school this morning. On Monday morning, I was stunned to discover a layer of ice at least a quarter inch thick welded to the windshield. Evan and I worked at it, but we only succeeded in breaking two scrapers. I stumbled back into the garage in search of better things.

And I found them. Chisels! With chisels in hand, I returned to my ice-sculptured vehicle and began...uh... chiseling away at the ice layer. When I pulled out this morning, there was a 10"x15" aperture on the driver's lower corner of the window. Unsafe? Probably. But I am a persistent little bugger, and the prospect of giving up and switching to Tara's van didn't appeal to me.

We parked in the south parking lot, facing south.

After my fifth grade class today, one young lady (initial "A") came back with a sheet of paper and a question. "Mr. Kluth, I made up a Latin sentence and I wonder if I did it right."

Her sentence said: Avus longus in Europa hiemo.
Now, I'm sure that if her Latin had been accurate, you'd be able to translate. But it wasn't, so I don't fault you at all.

So I began to translate: "The long grandfather...?" I looked at her in amused confusion.

"No, I wanted it to say, 'The grandfather longs to spend the winter in Europe.'"

[This is where you imagine our conversation where I help A differentiate between long as in "not short" and long as in "desire". We were pretty much out of time, so I just grabbed the pencil and wrote:

Avus in Europa hiemare desiderat. (You'll have to imagine a macron over the final "a" in Europa.)

"Oh," she said, in that way you say "oh" when you realize that you don't know how to get where you'd like to go.

Then she tried for a new path. "You know that thing L comes to with you? Is that just for her?"

(See one of my previous posts for context: one of A's classmates sacrifices her recess every Thursday because she wants to learn all about Latin and how to use it as soon as she possibly can.)

So I say, "The only reason L gets to do extra Latin is because she asked. If you want to be a part of that, you probably could, too."

It appears that I may be able to develop another little Latin nerd in the days ahead.

When I left school for the day, the sun was shining and the ice layer had completely vanished.