DATE: January 2009
TITLE: Violets
are Blue
AUTHOR: losingntrnslatn (LosingInTranslation,
Jennifer)
DISCLAIMER: Don’t own anything associated with the show… I just like
playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!
RATING: T for Teen
SPOILERS: Through US Aired Episodes of Season 9
PAIRINGS: GSR
WORD COUNT: 474 (Yes, a ficlet!)
SUMMARY: Gil Grissom meets his greatest scholastic challenge.
A/N: Kind of an odd and fast moving plot bunny… Just
came over me and begged to be written. I didn’t even make it out of bed before
it was done!
REVIEWS: Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or
not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a
little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Violets are Blue
Gil Grissom
loved to teach. His entire being was about teaching, in one form or another.
But he never imagined teaching something so incredibly simple would turn into
such an astounding headache. After all, it was only a poem. Not even a poem,
really. It was nothing more than a doggerel; meant to
be light verse with a humorous bent. It should not be the source of so much
frustration and aggravation.
And yet,
there he sat, going over the same four lines for the umpteenth time, without a
resolution in sight. He decided to use his exhaustive knowledge of poetry and
literature in an effort to persuade his persistent student to finally acquiesce
on the matter.
“There are
those who believe the poem derives from Sir Edmund Spenser’s sixteenth century
work entitled, ‘The Faerie Queene.’ In the Olde English it read, ‘It
was upon a Sommers shynie
day, When Titan faire his beames did display, In a
fresh fountaine, farre from
all mens vew, She bath'd her brest, the boyling heat t'allay; She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew, And all the
sweetest flowres, that in the forrest
grew.’ Which is something of a stretch obviously, but it was also likely
used to inspire the refrain by Victor Hugo when writing ‘Les Miserables.’” He stopped when he was met with total
silence.
Looking
around the room, he found no response and asked, “What?”
Sara shook
her head and turned back to the sandwiches she was making when she said, “I
think that’s a little much.”
“But it’s
the truth. Many scholars believe the origins of this specific poem came from
that work, as evidenced by Hugo’s use of it in one of the many songs peppered
throughout ‘Les Miserables.’ It was ‘Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses, Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours.’”
“What does
all that French have to do with them saying violets are blue? Violets are not
blue, Daddy. And besides, roses are way more than just red.” The young girl
with the soft brown hair and blue eyes scrunched up her face into a stone wall
of stubborn disapproval.
He had seen
that look before, and he knew it was a lost cause. His daughter had obviously
inherited her mother’s sense of realism, and there really was no good argument
he could use to fight that one, except the hard truth.
“Fine… The
violets are blue because you can’t rhyme anything with purple,” he blurted out
with great resignation.
“Oh, okay.”
She scribbled the words down on her worksheet and moved on to the next item on
the list.” “Now, how the heck can a cow jump over the
moon?”
Teaching forensic
entomology to a bunch of doctoral candidates was a piece of cake. His real
challenge came from getting through first grade reading homework.