Preface: To any French speakers out there - please excuse my absence of proper accents in this post. I know where they should be but I am too lazy to get them accurately placed. My sincere apologies!
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I was speaking with my mom earlier today and she told me she was meeting my dad and some friends at "The Club" (i.e. the yacht club where they are members but don't have a boat - ha!) and she invited me to join them. I declined the invite because I have way too many dvd's to watch and I am a bit of a geek who would prefer to be the geek who DOESN'T spend every Friday night out with her parents (one in a month is acceptable, if they're cool, right?).
At 9:10 PM I get a call from my very tipsty mother...
"Gertz..." Uh-oh, that's what she calls me when she's 2.8 sheets to the wind...
"Yeah, mom?"
"We've got a change of plans."
Uh-oh. Please Dear God Do Not Mean a Change of Plans TONITE.
"Oh yeah?"
"Gertz, there is a French woman here, and she and I are going to come to the City tomorrow and walk..."
Shit. I was already planning on spending 2pm and on Saturday at my folks' house, preparing for the holidays and whatnot. Now my mom was altering the plan.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Her name is Anne. Here she is."
What????
Anne: "Oui, bonjour?"
Gertie: "Bonjour, Anne. C'est un plaisir de vous rencontrer. Vous allez faire une petite promenade avec ma mere demain a San Francisco, c'est ca? (translation: Nice to meet you. I understand you are doing a walk with my mom in SF tomorrow?"
Anne: "Oui, tout a fait." [Yes, that's correct]
Gertie: "Superbe! [ not.] Et j'ai entendue qu'on va nous nous rencontrer apres pour un petit dejeuner?" [Fantastic! And I understand we'll meet afterward for breakfast?]
Anne: "Oui!"
Great. There go my morning plans. Plus, I don't know if I'm in the mood to meet a 70 year old French woman, no matter what time it is on a Saturday. But then, I tell myself it is better to practice than not to. But then, I think of sitting at a table with my mom who barely speaks a lick of French (how she got the French lady to understand what they will be doing tomorrow morning I will never know) and some 70 year old French lady and I wonder how on earth my mother is going to enjoy listening to Anne and I rattle off En Francais. Because, if I know my mother at all (and I know her to the core), she will ask me at the end of the lunch, if I don't speak French with the French woman "what is wrong with you?! You didn't use your French at all! How are you supposed to remember it if you never use it?" And I also know that we speak French the entire time, my mom will sit there politely in oblivian and afterward say "well, since I made the plans and introduced you and paid for your breakfast, it would have been nice if you included me just a little bit."
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