PARASOL PUBS
I Was The Oldest Person In The World
Or so I thought a decade ago
Oh how young and foolish I was, a mere 68. Sadly, I hadn’t even felt old until I stepped out of my age-related comfort zone and into a classroom of teenagers all signed up for a French immersion course. Although I was there to learn French, it was the only thing I had in common with my fellow students.
I dissolve into fits of giggles every time I read “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” in which David Sedaris writes about his efforts to learn French.
Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. “I want me some lamb chop with handles on ’em.”
Like me, Sedaris eventually signed up for an immersion course. He was forty-one at the time, nervous and intimidated because everyone had better accents and spoke better French than he did. I remember that feeling. I’d treated myself to the three-day course at a Montpellier language school because I wanted to move on from toddler French to something approaching a conversational level.
It still hasn’t happened, but that’s another story.
