Maybe I Better 'Splain Myself

So, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this picture that I took in Paris.  To allay any fears you may have had, here's my story and I'm sticking to it.

a)  Yes, I was with students when I took this picture, but I only knew about it because THEY pointed it out to US!  They thought it was great that I took the picture to show my friends. 

b)  Remember that the students who were with me in Paris were 16-18 years old, hardly the young ages of my middle school students and therefore far less impressionable with silly pictures that had the word ass in them.  And it's not like we were handing out detentions for saying dirty words.  If that had been the case, then everyone would have had detention when we first arrived at the school and one of the French kids had a t-shirt that said Mother f-ing something or other all spelled out in English.  That blew them away far more than Madame taking a picture of meat.

c)  The ASS in the picture really was supposed to be ASSIETTE which is the French word for plate but clearly there wasn't room for the whole word.

d)  It was about 10pm the night they found that sign, so we were all a little silly.  This came right after we saw a restaurant called PANIS and as I looked at it and imagined one of them saying PENIS, that exact word came out of one of their mouths and I laughed out loud.

e)  And no, my students do not read this blog, or if they do, it is not because I've told them about it or given them the address.  I do have a blog for my students but I don't even use the blogger platform for it, so if they ever made the connection, they'd be more savvy than I would imagine.  This blog here is just for us adults, as far as I know.

f)  The part of Paris where this picture was located is known as the Latin Quarter.  These particular streets are known for their ethnic foods and college student oriented places, and there was a strip club right in among the restaurants that not a single kid mentioned.  Either they were too horrified to acknowledge it in front of us or they didn't see it.  I can't decide. 

All in all, the word ass was hardly the most shocking thing these kids saw while they were in Paris.  The ads in store windows with naked or almost naked women advertising beauty products or clothing or whatever were probably far more shocking to most of them.

And that, my friends, is all she wrote.