"Teacher, I lost my shit."

Some of you might recall the magic baguette episode.

Since then, I've had some pretty solid French-to-English mistakes. Like earlier this week, during a lesson on Thanksgiving.

Me: What do we eat on Thanksgiving?
Yasmin (student): Dinde!
Me: In English?
Yasmin: Ze dinde!

But what do you say to your 14-year old French student when he very seriously proclaims:
"Teacher, I lost my shit."

Some might veer away from confronting his obvious error and simply offer, "You mean your sheet?"

Not I. I've decided I've got nothing to lose. Since I've already made a few pretty explicit and, some might argue, inappropriate choices in class.

Like when I played "Celebrity" with my quatrième class at Terrenoire and thought, mistakenly, that it would be a good idea to place all the names of American celebrities in my cupped hands, so that the students had to resort to inserting their fingers into the small opening produced between my thumbs in order to pinch a slip of paper. This strategy worked just fine until we reached the end of the game, and, left with only 3 slips of papers in my cupped hands, the last student was forced to plunge his fingers forcefully into the gap between my palms, resulting in a pretty explicit gesture for the enjoyment of the entire class.

Or when a student tried to describe Pamela Anderson's larger-than-average breasts in English, and I found myself mocking "large breasts" with hands gesticulating all too wildly in front of my own chest.

So when Ferdy, a student in my troisième class at Terrenoire, announced to me that he had lost his "shit," I met his challenge head on. I wrote both words on the board, and told the students to repeat each with their distinct pronunciation. If you're gonna say a word, even if it's a bad word, you may as well say it right and use it in context.

Shit or sheet? Like bitch or beach, this is an important question for French speakers of English. One that I've addressed twice already in the past week. I'm looking forward to more, since adolescents already know as many or more bad words than I do. Besides, who am I to spare them English curse words? Most of you know I curse like a drunken sailor. Even when I'm not drunk or sailing.