Right after lunch every day for two years, I tortured the Latin teacher with my skills in Latin. As a senior in high school, I took Spanish with the freshmen. It was my only choice other than shop. A former classmate swears that I never asked him about Spanish, but he answered a lot of questions about my senior physics class.
I needed help. It was all Greek to me and I didn’t dare to ask the guys in physics for help. As the only girl in the class, I managed to top both their scores on the first test. They spent the rest of the year evening the score in every way possible. When we studied electronics, I lived in fear of being shocked. They played on that fear until I refused to touch anything they rigged up. Once, I as I stepped back shaking my head, hands held behind my back, they laughed and pointed out the lack of power to the wires.
So I studied physics along with the Spanish. It didn’t seem to hurt. A little bit of physics mixed with my Latin inadequacies and the sleep producing Spanish drills and I passed high school Spanish I.
Years later, when I was married with two children under foot, I tried Spanish again for college credit by correspondence.
While I ironed and practiced echoing the instructor on the audio apes, my three-year-old played quietly under the table with his building blocks and toy cars. About halfway through the tape as I was repeating the phrase, he looked up and sad, “You said that one right, Mom.” That was the only time he said that. We won’t discuss the grade.
I did better when I went to college and took Basic, a computer language. I enjoyed it so much we bought a computer and a boon on Basic for children.
The one who once played under the table sat at the table and monopolized the computer all summer. Sometimes when he talked about what he was doing, I fearfully warned him to be careful and not crash the computer. He quit telling me what he was doing. He just explored the computer’s secrets until he could fix anything I crashed.
Last year I took sign language classes with one of my children. I was determined to learn the language. I practiced twice as much, but when the kid finger spelled a word across the room to me, I stared stupidly at the three fingers folded over the thumb and little finger and could not remember ‘m.’ Every time my score in finger spelling games was lower than his, that child ad the audacity to laugh.
I was bested in electronics and sign language. But I figured we were about equal in spoken languages: a couple in high school, take the college minimum and nothing more.
Then the high school offered Russian by satellite and my senior who had already had two years of Spanish signed up. He came home amazed, “This language makes sense.”
We can discuss the grade.
Recently he said he was going to study Greek. When I called and asked how the Greek was going he said, “I’ll take that next year. I’m kind of busy with Arabic this semester.”
He doesn’t torture teachers with his translations, stays awake during practice an people actually understand what he says. I’ve either been bested again or years ago someone switched babies on me.