Only 8 more days until the very last class at Le Cordon Bleu will end. This class is scary. I’m not talking about basic scary, oh no. This is Freddie Krueger-Exorcist-Shining-Michael Myers scary. Just calm down with me. Students who suck will never make it out of this class. Don’t even think about it!
The next quest to conquer will be three months of an externship somewhere in Dallas. I was supposed to complete this important externship with John Tesar at Spoon, but the restaurant doesn’t exist anymore. Now I still wear my blue cravat like I have an extern site sealed down when I really do not. I should be ashamed of myself.
Le Cordon Bleu makes people without an externship wear a white cravat. It’s like reverse psychology that tricks people into getting their externship taken care of sooner than they would. The school is super serious about the blue cravat being special. It worked because I still wear mine and, please don’t tell anyone, it makes me feel cool. This is a secret and I am nothing more than a cravat poser.
Last week I had a C in this class. I am almost a 4.0 student. Gasp. This grade was a catastrophe the second I logged on to see my grades. Come on! This week things are on the up and up because I now have a barely B. Barely having a B is embarrassing. Please feel sad right now. I do not expect this sad B to turn into an academically acceptable A in 8 days, so accepting this as reality feels like the right thing to do.
My class is very small and everyone is super nice. There’s a guy who whistles all the time. For some reason his whistling doesn’t make me angry like pen clickers and bag lickers do. He whistles so much that he has passed this whistling phenomenon onto one other student who doesn’t even realize he’s become a whistler as well. He’s innocent of all whistling guilt. I could even hear whistling when I went to buy water from the expensive drink machine down the hall today.
This is crazy stuff. Sometimes when I’m lost in a long distance trance while sweeping, I try to figure out the tune his whistle song is carrying. I thought I’d figured it out today, but he stopped just before the score. Go figure. Next week I’m going to interview this student about the songs he picks to whistle and why.
Almost none of the students make me growl, which is a miracle. No one steals mise en place or knives or tin foil or sauce. It’s amazing to not feel like Nancy Drew or Scooby Doo searching for the clarified butter culprit. There aren’t any lazy people either! Miracles!!! And even though they can tell I’m not Thomas Keller’s cousin, it’s all good. We work together and apart and things are working out. When I’m in the weeds Clark always saves the day. He’s like Clark Kent without glasses wearing a chef coat.
One of the students is a girl who gave me her phone number. It was really weird when I sent close to six texts in one day. They were important, but no one needs to be text-stalked the first day of establishing a minimal phone friendship. I said, “I’m sorry.” She probably is fine with it since she seems happy all the time.
This class is the hardest class since F3 and I got really mad the other day because I felt my chef teacher was being unfair. After thinking about what happened for about one hour, I decided to not be upset anymore. The best advice is chin up, listen up, and zip it.