token know-it-all from outer space

I've been saving up stories about this semester's biggest token know-it-all, whom I'll call Sadie. You get at least one a semester and they always make you wonder why, in their infinite, holier-than-thou, wisdom, did they ever take French 101 if they know so much about it already? Why, indeed, are they not simply teaching French 101?

Anyhoo... This particular KIA has outdone herself til I'm wondering if she isn't only a know-it-all but an extraterrestrial as well. At the very least she's had some interesting socialization somewhere along the way...

1.
Day One of class...
I'm explaining just a few things about the syllabus, had just mentioned the fairly strict parameters for missing the big graded components. The cartoon word bubble where I detailed exactly what they could be excused for is still hanging in the air... Then I point out the place on the course plan where they could see what to preread for class... A hand goes up that I would soon come to dread...

-Yes?
-So we can look ahead and see what's coming up in class?
-Yes, you can.
-So if I have a vacation coming up can I just look ahead and do the test or whatever early?
-(Listening for the laugh track or the Candid Camera music to no avail) Um, no. As I said, the only things you will be excused for, as per standard university regs, are immediate family illness or funeral, your own illness, or an official university-excused event.

Sadie continued to look at me frowningly as this info was computed. Seeing that this process would perhaps take a while, I decided to go ahead with my syllabus spiel...

2.
A couple of weeks ago we're working on -er verbs to describe activities. We had just looked at how to say "in the morning," "on the weekend," etc., too. So we were putting them together in partner work but I started by modeling with a couple of people...

Qu'est-ce que tu fais le samedi matin? (What do you do on Sat. mornings?)

I hit 4 or 5 people quickly whom I knew would be able to answer relatively well as guinea pigs. Two of them answered, Je déjeune. (I eat breakfast.) Afterwards I told everyone to ask their partner the same thing but they were to change the timeframe each time. I started circulating to see if anyone was having trouble when The Hand rose sharply.

I went over to Sadie.
-I don't understand.
-Well you're going to ask the same question of your partner an-
-(Interrupting) No, I mean I don't understand why their answers were correct.
-Um, well there's not really a wrong answer unless it's just completely illogical.
-No, I mean I thought "déjeuner" meant "to sleep" but someone just said it meant "to have breakfast."
-That's correct.
-Well I don't think any of them get up early enough to have breakfast.
-Well, I guess we have to go ahead and believe them if that's what they say they do on Saturday mornings.
-Yeah but I thought it meant "to sleep," in which case it would have made sense.
-(Didn't really say but wanted to... Well and if your aunt had des couilles she'd be your uncle but that's beside the point, just like this entire interchange...)


3.
On occasion Sadie likes to interject during the lesson, either to make herself sound smart or to try to catch me. It's not like she's really trying to catch me making a mistake, it's more like she wants to illustrate that there's more to the story which I'm not divulging,(which of course is ALWAYS the case since we're in a beginning French class, not an advanced one, so the Incredibly Scary Grammar Points and Humongous Vocab Banks we're giving them really are only the tip of the iceberg; their heads would explode if we told them everything, for crying out loud...)

Anyway the other day we were asking each other things like "Do you play drums?" or "Do you go shopping?" and then I told them they had to come up with a follow-up question ("Why, why not, where, with whom, etc.") and we then brainstormed with types of things you could say in response to the follow-up. Some examples were "It's fun," "It's boring," "I don't like it," "It's interesting," etc.

We're just about to dig in and Sadie says, Couldn't you also say "It's difficult" or "It's easy?" But she says it with that tone like how dare I not give them these two Hugely Key Adjectives with that look on her face "I know Mme S is up to something when she doesn't enumerate every single one of the 300,000 or so things you could say after the word 'It's.'"

I kept my poker face one more time; Yes, in fact you can say "It's" plus any adjective you like to describe whatever activity you're discussing. (If nothing else she's giving me lessons in graciousness and maybe lessons in being able to laugh about this stuff instead of getting totally pissed off and driven crazy like I used to. OK well sure it still bugs me sometimes but Hey! I'm making progress!)

4.
And in fact sometimes Sadie knows that she's a little off. After our last vocab quiz (one at the end of each chapter the day before the actual chapter test) as I started collecting the quizzes, she stops me and asks, (in all seriousness, not joking the way they sometimes do when they're hinting that they need EC because they did badly, etc.)
-What did you say for the extra credit?
-Um, I didn't.
-Didn't you say to add something on the bottom for the extra credit?
-(Smiling, I hoped congenially) No, Sadie, the EC is in your head.
She laughed goodnaturedly and handed in her quiz.

5.
Now here's the clincher from last Friday. This is the day that I decided that it's a socialization problem and/or that she's an extraterrestrial (in which case it's still a socialization problem but a much bigger one than if she were human, at least one would hope...)

As a warm-up at the beginning of class they were to ask their partners "What are you going to do this weekend?" in immediate future tense. As I started to make my rounds, Sadie's partner had just asked Qu'est-ce que tu vas faire ce week-end? and Sadie looked up at me with rather a challenging look (now that I think of it, it was very similar to the looks this one little kid in a daycare where I worked briefly in 1993 would give us each time she took off her panties and ran to the corner of the room and to pee on the floor just to see how fast we'd react) and said :

Je vais faire mon ami
which doesn't translate as well as she would have liked but she still got her oh-so-daring message across: "I'm going to do my boyfriend." I didn't bat an eye and just said Très bien and continued my rounds. In fact her partner was pretty flabbergasted once she figured out what it meant, the moreso realizing that I had been right there.

Now everyone knows I'm far from prudish in general, still I would never have said something like this in front of an instructor and did find it just slightly unseemly, but whatever.

Crazy days.