"Yes, Headmistress" (part 15)

(Previous posts from this series):

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13 part 14

Part 15

Have you begun to wonder just where our Headmistress has gone? For our purposes she has gone nowhere, just yet. She has remained at her beloved Primary School, the guardian of all would-be academics, ready when swift discipline is needed. A 'tight ship', that's what it was, and our Miss Lunn stood firmly at the helm. 

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The two new Americans found out pretty quickly that they were 'not in Kansas anymore'. The  feel-good approach emphasized in American schools seemed vaguely missing. I do not think self esteem was written about in the handbooks! But the local students didn't appear to mind all that much. They were used to it.

"Mum,", our two would say, "we get laughed at over at that school." 

"Oh?" I replied calmly, while thinking daggers at whoever it was that had laughed. "What seems funny to them?"

But it wasn't all that easy to describe. "Well, they think we sound funny. They tell jokes we don't get. And...," (this was intriguing) .. "we don't know the reasons for the Wars of the Roses.."

Well, good grief. How could any American child know the reasons for the Wars of the Roses? I ask you. I certainly did not know them, and I had read the Dynasty series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles! The Dynasty series was awesome. In it were the intricacies of which king (or queen) had been beheaded, and which king (or queen) had had a go at somebody else's head. The series contained the ins and outs of the Plantagenets, the Lancasters and the Yorks, but it would be impossible to remember all of them (although I was dreadfully upset over the Battle of Bosworth..).

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"Well, maybe we can look at the Wars, together. When do you need to know them by?"

"There's a test next week," said the distraught daughter.

"What!"  Oh dear..

It all seemed rather impossible. But the thing about the jokes? That made sense. We none of us understood most of the jokes at first, and would look perpetually baffled. Then we developed the sense of humor (humour) as time passed, and it all became hilarious! 

And so we forged ahead. We grappled with the Wars together, we started getting the jokes, together - and at least some of our American accents began to undergo a strange, ah,  modification. Which is another story.

And there is always another story.


Rule, Britannia!
the SconeLady



photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40295335@N00/9374452428/">Joel Abroad</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/8071721112/">dullhunk</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>