O Tannenbaum

Our high school German teacher, Vibike was a little crazy, which also made her sometimes a lot of fun. But after three years, she got pregnant and had Heidi, and she did not come back. I was one of those high school students who loved foreign language. so took more than required even for college prep. The school could not find another German teacher, so they hired a retired French professor to teach French. I took a year of French my senior year. He was not as charismatic as Vibike, but he was also fun in his own way. He was especially fun when he let me knit in class, but told the underclassmen that they could not knit also until they were carrying an "A" like I was. This inspired me to knit even more than I might have. 

The German stuck enough to test out of two classes in college. I remembered enough after a year of not practicing it much. Taking three years of high school German saved money and satisfied the college foreign language requirement.

Vibike's native tongue was Danish, and she informally taught us a little bit of that too. When we adopted German names, mine was supposed to be Greta, but she usually called me Gwenchen instead. In German pronunciation, that sounded like Gvenchen. In fact her default was all of our real names with "chen" at the end, which made us all "little" us's. At Christmas, we made black forest German chocolate cake and had a party at her house. She taught us German Christmas songs, and we serenaded our fellow boarding school students, even when she was not around. 

It was not uncommon for students to break out singing at boring moments like standing in line waiting for the last food bell to ring. Things like that happen at boarding schools. Food bell means dinner bell. There were 3 leading up to dinner to help boarding school students make it on time - the 15, the 5, and ready, set, go. If you went over at the 15, you had to stand around and stare at people, so it was more fun to sing sometimes.

Particularly, my friend and classmate, Imi worked out harmony with O Tannenbaum, and I sang melody. We bee-bopped around campus singing it together when the inclination took us. Sometimes we sang it in line waiting for the last dinner bell to ring. By our Junior year, this was a three-year tradition, and when we met up years later after high school, we sang it some more, for fun, even though it wasn't Christmastime.

I had to take a resident's vital signs the other night, and administer some medications. She happened to speak German, and I happened to know this. I asked her if she knew "Die Gedanken Sind Frei." She did not. I asked if she knew "O Tannenbaum." Her face broke into a big smile, and she began to sing it. I joined in, while I finished her cares.