Chaucer

There is a great scene in The Music Man where the mayor's wife dresses down the librarian for encouraging the teenagers of the town to read "smutty books", like those by Chaucer, Balzac, and Revale. I don't know who the last two are, but I did read Chaucer in high school and I certainly didn't remember anything remotely "smutty", so I thought it was a big joke. Well, we just read a retelling of some of Canterbury Tales for kids and I'm sure the mayor's wife would not be pleased! Talk about potty humor! Bare bottoms, farts, visitors sneaking into teenage daughter's beds at night to "snuggle," high humor to my kids.

Isn't it rather funny that I didn't notice any of this when I read it? I thought I really did read it at the time, but apparently I didn't actually understand that Old English. And, you'd think I would have caught the clue that there might be something juicy. The summer before we were supposed to read it for school, my friend and I saw that the movie Canterbury Tales was playing so we decided to go see it. When we got to the box office, however, they wouldn't sell us tickets because it was rated X. You'd think this would aroused my curiosity about the book, but apparently not, because I didn't remember a thing about it beyond the first 10 lines that I had to memorize.

Makes me want to check out Balzac and Revale, whoever they are.