Wasauchimmer

 

Whatever! Talk about a word that works for any occasion. ‘Whatever’ is the youth’s version of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious; something to say when you don’t know what to say.

Back in my college days, my German club came up with its own rendition, wasauchimmer. We coined this word in response to our group excuse for what we were doing. Five of us had gotten together during exam time. Someone said wasuachimmer when the question “Is this cheating?” was posed. I don’t think it really is a word in German, but it assuaged our guilt.

Technically, it was not cheating at all, but I found out later we did cheat ourselves. In the end, none of us knew as much as the other students. What we did know was that our teacher gave the same exams for years and years. Our fearless leader found out when he used a roommate’s old exam to help him study. Possessing a photographic memory, he realized during mid-terms his study guide was being represented verbatim. The cheater was our professor.

Ironically, I had helped the guy in charge of the ‘study’ group in an honors course before. In return, he invited me to join in one evening. There was a grad student with a wife and a baby and an athlete who were both barely managing their class loads. The fifth member was, of course, a girl he wanted to date. I only did it once at the end of a semester, but it has haunted me ever since. So has Wasauchimmer. (Voss-owk-immer)

Writing and Graphic copyright by Mar Startari, 2019

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