Saturday, February 15, 2014

en cas de coup de foudre: smash face.


valentines and pattern drafting.

i've never been a valentine lover or hater,
pretty indifferent about the holiday.
back home it's all huge stuffed animals and overpriced roses.
i've had three notable ones (one of which was wonderful and romantic), and now a fourth i suppose, though all for different reasons.
in the fourth grade, i gave a boy a valentine to tell him i liked him.
he had brought the girl next to me chocolates and a teddy bear.
his response to my palm sweaty proclamation of 9yr old love:
erasing (poorly) a valentine from someone else in our class,
and writing my name on it instead.

paris.
the city of love.
i had class until 7pm.
young lovers were excited about celebrating in paris,
going to the champagne bar on top of the eiffel or paying a ridiculous amount for bottle service to get into some swanky club.
everyone else was having some sort of 'ladies night'.
my plans included: walking oliver in the rain and getting chinese take out.
the only thing that had interested me was a colette event that ended 30 minutes before i was even out of class.
a friend of mine asked if they even celebrate valentines day here.
my response: it's paris.
this year, the flower council of holland installed 1,500 roses all over the city that looked like fireboxes, 'in case of a love emergency' 
it was actually grandly romantic.



you can read the full story/watch the lil video clip here.

in pattern drafting we mentioned this to our teacher. 
she's excitable and even though likely in her 60s,
gets giddy like a school girl over stuff like this.
halfway through class, she was analyzing my cap height and armhole depth on a jacket pattern construction, and it was off by a couple of millimeters.
neither of us could figure out why.

"what's wrong with your pattern?" she says to herself as she looks it over.
-other student says something unrelated in french, she responds back-
turning back to me she says, "why don't you speak french?"
followed by a toxic string of questions that went like this:
don't you have any french friends?
why don't you go out and meet some?
why don't you just go out in general?
why don't you have a boyfriend?
if you just want friends, why don't you go to the gay club?
or the lesbian clubs?
have you heard of *(lists several websites that i should immediately sign up for apparently)?
why don't you go to the french kissing event tonight at colette and get some action? (because it's during your class & it's not going to be people just standing around kissing each other)
i know- you should just wait in front of one of those flower boxes! 

there are 6 people in that class.
6.
yeesh lady.
any other uplifting things you'd like to talk about on valentines day?
one of my dog's died of bone cancer & my parents got divorced when i was 16, should we bring that up while we're at it?
here's an idea, we can talk about my pattern & you can mind your own gdmf business.
i of course didn't say any of that, and instead said, 'i don't really have time to go out, and i'm not really attracted to french guys, plus i'm learning french, can we talk about my sleeve?'
the sweet girl next to me responds to my silence to our teacher's questions with,
"i'm having a girls night later if you want to come.."
i'm pretty sure everyone else was just glad they weren't on the other side of her question rant.
the next morning we had a make-up class, for a different class.
4 of the 9 people showed up.
1 hadn't gone to bed yet (at 11am)
1 was still drunk
1 brutally hungover
the teacher was an hour late
and i was feeling pretty good about my chinese take-out.

hapy loveday, lovahs- from paris.





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