Today’s discussion was dominated by an Italian nanny, two chatty Poles, and a pouty, plump Moroccan woman who had grown up speaking French and had enrolled in the class to improve her spelling.
Questions were answered on a volunteer basis, and I was able to sit back, confident that the same few students would do the talking. Normally, when working from the book, it was my habit to tune out my fellow students and scout ahead, concentrating on the question I’d calculated might fall to me, but this afternoon, we were veering from the usual format. I didn’t know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven. It was simple enough but seemed an exercise better suited to the use of the word they. The object was to match the holiday with the corresponding picture. Printed in our textbooks was a list of major holidays alongside a scattered arrangement of photos depicting French people in the act of celebration. “Might one dance in the street? Somebody give me an answer.” “Might one sing on Bastille Day?” she asked. It was my second month of French class, and the teacher was leading us in an exercise designed to promote the use of one, our latest personal pronoun.
“And what does one do on the fourteenth of July? Does one celebrate Bastille Day?” “He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two. It is a dead on and excruciatingly accurate (and hilarious) portrayal of those cringe worthy moments in French class when your dismal vocabulary and tenuous grasp on grammar leads you to say things like: Take a listen (or read the transcript below). Without having the vocabulary for “cross” or “resurrection” let alone, “He gave His only begotten Son”, the conversation, and I use that term very loosely, quickly degenerates to trying to explain the Easter Bunny, and understand how and why the French Easter Bells fly in from Rome. In this particular excerpt, Sedaris and his global classmates are asked to explain the religious significance of Easter to an Islamic student who has never heard of the holiday. David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day is a must read for any expat in France, especially those of us who have taken too many French classes to count, and are still longing to “talk pretty” one day.
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