Note: this article was published in the 2017 Joke Issue.

For the past four years, the woman who has been teaching french to high schoolers, organizing International Women’s Day, and filling the halls with polite “Bonjours” has not been Lorin Pritikin. The woman has in fact been Pritikin’s identical twin, Leslie Pritikin.

Sophomore Audrey Shadle arrived early to Pritikin’s class and saw Leslie’s email on the screen instead of Lorin’s. Shadle also noticed a pair of contacts that looked like Pritikin’s eye color. When Leslie appeared at the doorway and saw Shadle with knitted eyebrows, Leslie rushed into the room and logged out of her email.

“I was looking for my email confirmation on a box of macarons from mon cherí Lorin herself,” Leslie said. “But I told everyone that I was just making sure my twin got a shopping confirmation for her new French textbooks.”

As Leslie was frantically scrambling to turn off the computer, more people started filing in to the classroom when they heard the FaceTime ringtone. A “Lorin Pritikin” was requesting a FaceTime call.

“I was so confused,” Shadle said. “I thought to myself, ‘Are Lorin and Leslie trying to pull a Parent Trap act on us?’”

Shadle accepted the request, and the class saw the real Mrs. Pritkin with her family on the beaches of the South of France. Shadle reported that it made sense that Leslie and not Lorin was teaching the class because Leslie refused to teach French. According to her classmate, sophomore Charlie Dolin, Leslie would merely talk about her life.

“We spent little time learning French,” Dolin said. “One time she told us a story about how she got lost exploring the Amazon Basin.”

The teachers also noticed that Leslie seemed unfamiliar with French. Upper School French teacher Cynthia Marker recalled how Leslie never understood her French jokes.

“I would joke to ‘Lorin’ in French, but she wouldn’t respond back, or she would just smile,” Marker said. “I said to her one time in French, ‘Toto is at school and asks if he can go to the toilet. His teacher says no. Then she asks Toto, ‘Where is the largest river in the world?’ ‘Under my bench,’ he answers.’ Usually, french-speakers laugh when I say that, but Leslie’s expression never changed. I guess she thought I hadn’t finished the joke.”

When Lorin and Leslie were discussing the switch, they recall that Leslie wanted to have an immersive experience in France, but she thought that by being in a classroom, she could really get the one-on-one learning she needed from her students.

“I’d like to think that the roles were reversed for the past four years,” Leslie said. “I’m not really the teacher! Do you think I have the patience to teach a French class?”

Lorin says that she just needed a break from the busy life of being a teacher.

“There were too many papers to grade, too many grade reports to write, and too many students, so I was just like, Allons a la France! Not only would I be basking on the sandy shores of Cannes, but I would get to practice my francais with the French!  Merci!”