Cheating Never Gets You Anywhere

Let me be proof of that. I'm sitting next to a woman who is clearly conversating in French. I took two years in high school, where I was busted for cheating my freshman year. I also vaguely remember that we spent weeks translating a book about some monster on a train, probably something a first grade kid was reading. The second year, I cheated off of this really cute, friendly Asian guy named John. So, needless to say, I think I learned my numbers and that's about it.

I didn't take French again until my junior year in college. Wherein, I had a four year lapse since I had been around the language. I ended up taking four semesters, and finally, by the fourth semester, I thought I had become a little proficient in it. I had a professor that would not speak a single word in English. In fact, for extra credit, I had attended some thing wherein he came up to me and started speaking English. My mouth dropped open. English sounded foreign coming from his mouth. I thought to myself, "Just speak French. I don't know you as English."

So, here I am with a real, live example of a true French woman, and I can't make out a word, except a pronoun and preposition here and there. That smarts really bad. Of course, my ear was always worse than my writing or reading skills. But still, I expected to pick up the general idea of what someone was saying. Boy, was I wrong there.