I don’t know how to write this post.  I’ve been working on it in my head for over a week now, and in none of the versions in my head have I hit the tone I like, but this story is either funny enough or weird enough to deserve telling– I just don’t know how to do it right.

Also, here’s a phrase I’ve never used on the blog before, but this is important:  Consider this your trigger warning, if you’re partial to such things.  This will end well, but it will not start well.

I was out of the office for a good chunk of last Tuesday.  When I got back the guy who had been acting as our principal designee (because the principal and AP were both also out of the office) said that there had been a really weird spike in sexual harassment issues during the time we’d been gone.  These things happen in middle school, but they’re not super common, so for multiple things to happen in the same day is odd.  I’m not around for the explanation or the ensuing phone calls; I just know Stuff has Happened.

The next day, I walk into a parent conference with the designee and the assistant principal because I need to talk to my boss for a few minutes, and end up sitting down and being part of the meeting.  Mom is the parent of a fifth grade boy, and he appears to be in grave trouble.  She is expressing two emotions: the first is horror and the second is an almost craven sense of apologeticness, if that’s a word.  She’s so sorry for what he did that it almost hurts me to listen to the conversation.

She keeps saying that when he used “the word” or “that word” that he didn’t really mean what the word actually meant, that they are immigrants and “that word” is used differently in their country.  She looks Hispanic, and so does the boy, and he has a unique first name that really doesn’t scan to any particular ethnic group or nationality that I’m aware of, so I assume “their country” is somewhere in South America.  Then I hear her speak to her son in whatever language they speak at home and it’s clearly not Spanish, but she doesn’t talk long enough for me to get past hey wait that isn’t Spanish and start listening for whatever the language actually is.  The general mood in the room is solemn; I consider leaving but she begins addressing her remarks to me as well as the other two as if I belong there so I don’t.

Eventually, she leaves, insisting that not only will she tell her son to stop using “the word” but that she will stop using “the word” herself, because she knows that the reason this happened is that she’s been setting a terrible example for their son and that she realizes that this is not how things are done in America.

One guess on what I think the word is, right?  There’s only one word in the English language– well, two, maybe— with enough power that someone would refuse to even say it while talking about it.  So he’s called someone the N-word, right?  But that’s not sexual harassment.  It’s a lot of things but it’s not sexual harassment.  So… huh?  Weirdly, though, there’s talk about how she’s pretty sure her son likes the girl he used “the word” around, and… huh.

They leave.  The AP and the other guy exchange a look, both take a deep breath, and then crack up laughing.

“What the hell happened?” I ask.  “What was the deal?”

“He threatened to rape a fifth grade girl,” the AP says, practically wiping tears from her eyes.  The boy, remember, was also a fifth grader.

My eyes widen.  What the fuck are you assholes laughing about?  This is, as you might imagine, a big deal.   I’ve literally never had to deal with a rape threat in a school before.  That’s major.

I express that sentiment.  They laugh harder.

“They’re German,” the AP says, as if that explains it.  I give her a yeah, so the hell what? sort of gesture.

Apparently there is, and if you are German or speak German better than I do please feel free to enlighten me here, some sort of German proverb, or slang expression, or figure of speech, or something, that basically means “stop bugging me” or “leave me alone,” meaning mild, possibly even affectionate harassment– that, when translated into English, comes out as rape.

This woman has been using this phrase, translated, around her son, for years.  She has apparently, and at this point my AP does a picture-perfect impression of this lady, one that causes me to lose it and crack up out of sheer disbelief, on multiple occasions said the phrase “I’m busy, go rape your father” to her son.

Her son, in saying “I’m going to rape you,” to a little girl in his class, meant “I’m gonna get on your nerves.”

And, understandably, this has caused all sorts of merry hell to break loose.  Apparently Mom is fully aware of the word’s connotations in English– how could she not be?– but hasn’t managed to purge the word from her vocabulary, to the point where American friends of hers have actually called her out on it and asked her to stop using it.  You can imagine how this would go, right?  You don’t just drop a loaded term like rape into a conversation without causing a little bit of a hitch here and there.  And, god, if she’s seriously said “Go rape your father” to her son while on the phone with someone else?  What the fuck I don’t even.

This all sounded deeply weird to me, of course, even a little unbelievable, until it hit me that I use the phrases “Are you fucking with me?” and “Are you shitting me?” on a fairly regular basis, and in very much the same way those phrases would be hugely opaque to anyone with no understanding of colloquial English.  This is, presumably, more or less the same phenomenon, only through another filter where it’s been translated.

So… yeah.  I have no idea if anyone reading this is laughing right now, or if you just think that’s an insanely weird conversation to have to have.  I hope you at least understand why I felt like I had to post it.  🙂