Very Very Sometimes

French has become my second skin. It didn’t happen on a particular day, but at some point during my time here, I stopped straining. I was able to register what others were saying at nearby tables, even when I was engaged in a conversation of my own. The background noise took shape; the effort became superfluous.

Often I wish I could go back. When I didn’t understand, I was able to imagine what witticisms the Parisians were laughing about when we passed one another on the sidewalk. But now I mostly get bits of conversation like, “He did?! It’s not true. I must be hallucinating—it’s not possible!” and “so I said, you’ve got a small dick and one big ball and you don’t know what to do with either!”

The Capretz Method set me up. Every week in high school, my French class sat before the television, eagerly waiting for the next installment of “French in Action.” On the weekly videocassettes, Mr. Capretz (of the infamous Capretz Method) sat as the anchor of his own French programming, spewing correct French grammar with wild gestures that threatened to rival the expressiveness of his coiffure.

Over four years, I watched him break down the weekly episodes of a linguistically dumbed-down soap opera revolving around Mireille, the blonde and braless parisienne, and Robert, the love struck American.

I spent hours in the language lab, my ears crushed under the awkward headsets, repeating bits of dialogue, which remain stuck in my memory today. Take, for example, the Marie-Laure catch phrase, “Mystery and bubble gum!” I understood this to mean “Beats me!” and that it is most effectively delivered when popping a gumball into one’s mouth and looking knowingly into the camera.

The first time I heard this phrase used by a French person, albeit, a French person in the United States, it not only confirmed the genius of Mr. Capretz and his method, but also convinced me that I would have no problems interacting with the French. Indeed, I would be able to pepper my speech with colloquial expressions like, “Do you have the peach?”, or better yet, “Do you have the potato?” (Apparently, the peach and potato are symbols of vitality in France. If you have the potato, it means that you’re in good spirits.)

Capretz Method confirmed, I memorized countless catch phrases. I was ready to jump onto the French scene like a loveable and non-threatening sitcom character. Whatever the situation, I was ready to react. The French would never be able to guess that there was an American lurking beneath all those linguistic frills.

My first opportunity to show off came shortly after my arrival in France, at the dinner table with my new host family. When the littlest boy complained about the food, the mother looked to me for support. There was my cue! I smiled knowingly and said, “What a crosspatch, that one!”

Instead of hearing the comforting laughter I’d come to expect after this phrase, my Paris début was met by the laughter of ridicule. I went over grammar rules in my head. I tried to smile along with them and asked, “Is there a problem with my sentence?”

“No, dear, your sentence was perfectly correct,” my host mother reassured me.

“Yeah. Perfectly correct if you’re an eighty year-old woman!” My host brother laughed; his seven siblings joined in. I wanted to kick them. All of them. And I wanted to find Mr. Capretz and make him sit down to dinner with the ten members of my host family and give them a talking-to about proper French expressions.

Over the year, I realized that colloquial expressions weren’t my only problem. Issue number two was my pronunciation. I wasn’t just speaking into a mic in the language lab—these people responded, and differently than the recorded answers. They were often confused.

Thanks to French vowels, instead of asking the pharmacist for a band-aid, I asked for a big pinching. Instead of telling my friend I’d lost two sweaters, I told him I’d lost two of my hen. That week, I also hurt my flea instead of my thumb. The list goes on. And each time they laughed, I was both embarrassed and furious. I told them, “You try to learn your language! It’s not easy!”

But oh, how things have come full circle. I spend my days teaching English to adults whose former textbooks have long since been out of print.

I understand that speaking a foreign language takes guts. You’re reducing the expression of your intellectual capacity to the language of a two year-old. So I try not to laugh.

For the most part, it's easy. Many of my students’ mistakes are boring. They translate directly from French, so end up telling me, “I write at the chief and he say me that he is not agree of live tomorrow.”

I take a moment to translate what they said back into French, and then confirm, “Oh, so you talked to your boss and he says he’s not letting you leave tomorrow after all?”

“What is after hall?”
“Nevermind.”
“Sorry? Mine?”
“Let it fall.”
“Okay.”

But then you have the champions. My favorite students. The ones who very confidently say obscene things. I love them for it.

And so here, at the end of my one-year contract as a teacher in Paris, as a tribute to my favorite students and because, well, I like to have the last laugh, I’m posting a new series: Very very sometimes. Portraits of my students. Stay tuned.