Everyone is influenced by their teachers. It sort of is the definition of “teacher.” I have had the good fortune to have a lifetime of spectacular educators. That said, when security questions asked “What was the name of your favorite teacher in school?” one name always came to mind first. Hearing of her recent death affected me profoundly. I’m not young, and my high school days are nearly 25 years behind me, so it shouldn’t be such a shock, but some people never change in your mind, always young, attractive, energetic, and a little bit wild and crazy.
Despite being no stranger to funerals, I used to think that a Eulogy was a speech that the person or people closest to the deceased gave as sort of an exposition to those gathered in memory. A few paragraphs to tell a history, some accomplishments, and statistics, but that’s not it at all. A eulogy is a chance for people with unique personal relationships to share with those closest to the deceased that unique perspective, the funny stories, and their unique personal connection. It’s a chance to show just how wide and far-reaching the influence was of their life. There is a theory in physics that says that there is nothing without interaction, that there must be interaction, either directly or through observation, for anything to even exist. As below, so above. Who are we without the interactions we share with others? The time, and the stories, we share with each other is more than precious, it’s how and why we exist.
In the hills of West Virginia, there’s a school we love so well…
I’ve been told, and life has proven it to be true, that it is a very unusual thing to remember 24 years after graduation, whether or not you took French in high school, let alone remember who taught the class, to still know her, to consider her a friend, and to wake up from a dream about her sad knowing that she is gone. Maybe it is a Mountain thing, maybe an Appalachian thing, maybe a West Virginia thing, maybe it is unique to Wayne County, or Wayne High School, or the class of ’99. However rare it may be, I’m grateful to be a part of it.
When I was asked if I remember any funny stories about Mme Oyler I didn’t know where to start.
Charlotte Marie Rachelle Tessier Maille Oyler of New Liskeard, Ontario was a…feisty one, apparently from a very early age.
I know the story of how she took a dare in primary school to lick a cow salt lick, acquired foot and mouth disease from it, which lead to her being jaundice (the French word for yellow is jaune) and how her treatment made it so that she couldn’t take the simple TB test.
I know the story of how, in Catholic Girls School, she used to get in trouble with “Sister RADAR” who always seemed to know when she tried to slip over to the Catholic Boys School next door.
I know that once, either from a dare, defiance, or just curiosity, she ran through the cloistered part of the convent to see the nuns without their habits on, and how she scrubbed the hall with a toothbrush in penance for it.
It is from her that I learned to take confession en français; “Pardonnez-moi mon père, j’ai péché.”
I remember the story of how, waitressing in the family business, she met her bear-hunting future husband, Michel, and fell in love with his shortened diphthong and pronunciation of “ice.”
I know that she loved being an American citizen…all except that it meant that she could no longer go to Cuba.
This is just where my personal funny stories with her begin.
I took six semesters of French Class in the four years of high school, French 1, 2, 3, Advanced French (which was mostly reading back issues of Côte Sud Magazine), and Marshall French 101 with her as the teacher. I have LOTS of fun and funny stories from those years.
One of my first impressions of her was what a good typist she was. Remember, this was when typing was still taught on typewriters and tests were hand-typed. She would set us to work on something and watch us over the typewriter and her glasses, perched on the edge of her nose, as she typed up the tests, her mouth moving silently as the words rolled across her mind and her fingers.
She definitely had a way of making class fun, funny, and something to look forward to, whether she was throwing a Koosh ball at us, pulling out her jeopardy buzzers, making us play time bingo (well, maybe that wasn’t so much fun) or writing plays using the words that we had learned.
Solange (that’s Crystal “with the crystal blue eyes” to most people) and I always did our best to take our little plays to the limit and beyond. Inspired by our field trip to Charleston to see a play by Molière, our “Buying Plane tickets” play went so far beyond that it involved someone “dans la section feumers” catching the plane on fire, a crash, a passenger with a pain in every part of their body we knew the word for, and another passenger who “est tombé et a cassé sa pipe.” She must have thought that we had araignées au plafond (spiders on the ceiling).
Once, she met me and Sarah at the Marshall Artist Series Film Festival showing of The Horseman on the Roof, Le hussard sur le toit, starring Juliette Binoche, who in one scene bares it all. Slowly and quietly her hand came up to cover my eyes. Later, at the Renaissance Bookstore, while we were discussing the film, we had a entertaining conversation about how “tomber et casser sa pipe (to fall and break one’s pipe)” was an idiomatic expression for “to die,” how “sa pipe (one’s pipe)” was a euphemism for one’s…well, you know, and how “la petite mort (the little death)” meant an orgasm, and how the three were weirdly related, somehow…maybe?
Charlotte was indeed an educator. From her I learned to read, to write, and to speak French. That’s a gift that I have used so many many times in my life, way more often than I have used the formula to determine the area of a rug (Mr. Mills), been asked to recite The Raven from memory (Mrs. Hagar), or been called upon to name the genus and species of a wildflower (Mr. Smith), though they come up occasionally as well.
My trip to France came not too long after 9/11, at a time when Americans were not well-loved in France (is there a time we are really?), a time of “Freedom Fries” and other Nationalist rhetoric. “Je m’appelle François Tessier. J’habite à New Liskeard, en Ontario. Je suis canadien.” Charlotte had taught me enough about her language, and her life, that, when accused of being an American, I was able to lie and get away with it. She thought that was hilarious.
Who would have ever thought the need for the French language would have been so great moving to Southern Florida? Did you know that Hollywood, Florida is the number 1 Quebecois tourist destination in the US? Every Canadian woman I saw with short cropped slightly burgundy colored hair made me think of her, and I saw a LOT of Canadian women with short cropped slightly burgundy hair.
Did you know that the third most spoken language in Florida is Haitian French Creole? During the 8 years that I lived in Florida not a single week went past that I didn’t use the skills I learned from Charlotte, how to speak french, but also how to navigate the murky waters of “horse french.” I would hear, “Oh! tu parles français!?” And I would give the answer I learned from her, “Absolument! Tout le monde parle français! C’est la langue de l’amour! (Of course! All the world speaks French! It’s the language of love)” and la glace a été brisée (the ice would be broken).
I went to see her when she was in the hospital after having her brain tumor removed. I knocked lightly on the door and said softly “Bonjour Charlotte. Ca va?” She smiled, barely able to open her eyes and said, “Is that Danny? I was just thinking about you.” The woman had just had a softball removed from her skull! Her head was bandaged up like a turban, and she was thinking about me?
She said that she was trying to remember what signs there might have been that something was wrong. She had noticed that her hair wasn’t parting quite like it used to and that she didn’t care so much about makeup, but thought that could have just been because she was getting older. Though the lack of makeup should have been as obvious of a sign as could be, she thought that it was too subtle. She said the first behavior that really struck her as being off the charts “not normal” was how she didn’t have time to talk to me when I came to visit her at the high school earlier in the year. I had just shown up at the school unannounced during the middle of a class. I didn’t think anything about her being too busy to chat with a former student, but it should have been as obvious as her lack of eye shadow and she knew it. She said that she normally would have put me to work teaching the class for her or at the least had the students translate our conversation in real time. Charlotte always had time for me. Charlotte always had time for anyone and everyone.
One lesson I learned from her that transcends just the words and the language is that in French, the word “toujours” means both “still” and “always.
Charlotte Marie Rachelle Tessier Maille Oyler, vous est ma professeure, et mon amie, pour toujours.