Living Vicariously Isn't All Bad

Most #shrinks would discourage their clients' attempts to live vicariously--for instance, watching 1,200 slides of someone's trip to #Romania instead of getting on a plane and going there yourself. And I'd have to agree with a lot of the #objections. Taking risks and venturing into the unknown builds character much more than sitting #safely in your room and ruminating about sky diving, water skiing, or alpine climbing. But once in a while living #vicariously is a great way to taunt someone and at the same time identify with another individual's #expertise. Junior high provided several occasions for this. After all, most kids that age have not yet reached the point where cliques and social status define their role in the educational hierarchy.To put it simply, eighth and ninth graders have more of a pack mentality than their elders (high schoolers). Their cohesiveness permits them to agree to perform various group #behaviors that can complicate the lives of teachers. I recall times when one of the class leaders would suggest that students do something fairly benign at a certain specific time. For instance, a whisper would start at one end of the classroom and would travel from one row of desks to another, informing pupils that everyone was to drop their pencil at exactly 12:05 pm. The idea was that this #synchronised group activity would startle the teacher, make everyone #giggle and break the boring routine of another day at the thankless task of studying algebra, geometry or whatever. One day our class (which as a group attended all the same subjects) was excited to see a substitute in our elementary French class. Miss Baxman, from the old school of proper pupil decorum and discipline, was absent, and another teacher--a sub--was taking over the classes. Our class was comprised of an average number of good, fair, and bad students in the challenging discipline of French language and grammar, with the exception of one person, an attractive brunette who had lived in Paris several years and had a fantastic accent that put all the rest of the French students to shame. We all knew and liked "Starr," who despite her #linguistic prowess never lauded it over her colleagues. In short Starr was a good egg, or shall I say un oeuf bon. So when the class decided to shock the sub with our secret weapon, Starr was up for the job. The fun was in our group effort to force the sub to call on Starr for an answer to to one of the homework assignments. Then we hoped she would "discover" our secret weapon whereupon she would become flustered, embarrassed, angry and otherwise #discombobulated by Starr's eloquent recitation of French phrases. That was what we hoped would happen, but despite Starr's #acquiescence to the group gambit, she had her mind on other things. To put it bluntly, Starr probably had too much French wine at last night's dinner and was desperately trying to catch up on her sleep in French class. As a result, she was not actively volunteering answers to the sub's homework review. In fact her eyes were half shut, and she had opened her book to the wrong page. (I knew all this because I was seated next to her.) The whole point of the class trick was to force the sub to hear French the way the Parisians really spoke it, and considering Starr's drowsy demeanor, the trick looked to be headed south. Something had to give to make it work. Each of us had identified with Starr's French facility, so our individual and group integrity were at risk. We wanted to #astound the sub with our French acuity and to do this we had to live vicariously through Starr. But Starr had in a sense opted out of the trick. She was all but snoring, and we were fast coming to the end of the class #assignment. The bell would ring in a few minutes and Starr and the sub would go their separate ways never to know that 30 students were frustrated and disappointed over the turn of events. Luckily, however, #fate intervened when Starr's book tumbled off her desk and onto the floor. The class collectively gasped, but Starr was nonplused. The noise was sufficient to awaken her, thankfully. She quickly went about gathering her books and papers as if nothing extraordinary had happened. But the sub was not to be conned. At this point she recognized that Starr was at the least not paying attention and at the worst, acting bored and superior. So the sub called her on it. "Mademoiselle, veuillez lire le paragraphe suivant," she said to Starr, who had at long last awakened to the request for her to read the next paragraph in the grammar book. That was just the opening the class had prayed for. As I was seated next to Starr, I helped her find her place on the page. Naturally the sub expected to hear fractured French--Franglais-- pour out of the mouth of Starr, but just the opposite ensued. I couldn't help smiling as Starr hypnotized the class and the sub with her dazzling display of verbal #agility. Living vicariously never felt so good.