The Elephant in the Room

As our most faithful blog readers know, we have plenty of pigeons and spiders around here, but this is the first time I have been able to muster the courage to discuss with you the elephant. The elephant in the room is a behemoth. Its complexity astounds us. It creates terrific highs and humiliating lows. Like a new born baby - or a terminal disease - we are constantly thinking about it and discussing it. The elephant, of course, is the French language.

How does one even begin to talk about what it is like to live with a language that has made an adverb from the word “cow” (vachement)? (An adjective I could understand, but an adverb?) Marty and I discussed starting with a posting entitled, “Just How Bad Are We at French?” but decided that could begin a devastating emotional spiral from which we’d never recover. (Anyway, the answer is: really bad.) I was tempted to talk about French school, but that also is too demoralizing to begin this discussion.

I know that many of you are interested in hearing about French school, but to demonstrate the inadvisability of opening with this topic, I will offer just a small taste of the humiliation that we so casually refer to as French school: I have spent years of my life in French classes. I had French in elementary school, junior high and high school. I recently took two refresher courses at UNH. I joined a French discussion group last fall. I took an intensive French course in France a couple of years ago. I always did my homework. I studied for exams. I was a good student. I have French genes. Despite these efforts and genetic qualities, I am in a class called “Elementaire.” Yes, years of effort have put me only one level above Marty’s “Debutante” class. While being labeled a “debutante” may seem a little unworthy of Dr. I-have-a-PhD-from-the-University-of-Chicago Lee, keep in mind that Marty never had a speck of French instruction before coming here. As Marty gleefully pointed out to me the other night, “Hey I’m a two-week kid, but you’re a seven-year kid.”

He obviously forgot who writes the blog and that revenge is ultimately very satisfying. I therefore must reveal that I was pulled aside by the school’s Director and told that Marty, regretfully, had to take private lessons. (They would have told Marty directly, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying, hence the problem.) In addition, he was the only student held back in his class. Okay, so what if he came into the class weeks after the other students, it’s still hilarious. (He thinks it's funny too.)After struggling desperately the first week or so of classes, he was actually so thrilled to be held back that he walked around the school excitedly telling all the other students about his new status as the One Who Stayed Behind. (If this character appears in the next Harry Potter book, I’m suing.)

You can see for yourself that French school is simply too perilous to offer a suitable beginning to our conversation about French. No, I realized that I needed a positive, can-do topic to start our discussion, so I decided to begin by sharing with you some terrific French survival tips. Marty and I are paying a lot of money for French school, why not share the benefits with you? Then it hit me - I have only accumulated one tip in my three weeks of intensive French instruction. But I have to start somewhere, so here it is, my big survival tip for you (drumroll please): “truc”

Okay, so “truc” maybe isn’t as exciting as “voila!” It’s quite a bit more humble than “merveilleux,” and it is certainly not as pretty as “enchanté.” This one little word, however, offers you the world.

The word “truc,” which is simply French for “thingamajig,” is indispensable for those of us who are noun-deprived. There must be millions of nouns in the French language, but you can cover almost all of them all with this itsy-bitsy, easy to pronounce, miracle-word. (The remaining nouns would no doubt be covered by the French translation for whosie-whatsie, but that remains a secret our French instructors appear reluctant to reveal.) Now isn’t “truc” worth three weeks of four-hours-a-day French instruction?

I must tell you, with more than a little bit of pride, that “truc” gave me my greatest triumph with the French language thus far. With only one sentence I managed to successfully ask for those plastic, colored thingamajigs that one puts on keys to distinguish them. I didn’t know if France had those things. I didn’t even know how to ask for them in English. In fact, if I needed one back home I would probably just have asked my mother who, in a never-ending quest for even greater levels of organization, stocks these sorts of things. But Mom was not here to save me this time. “Truc” came to the rescue.

There I was at the cobbler’s getting some keys copied (hey this is France, the cobbler copies the keys – don’t question it, just accept it). In a moment of unusual courage, perhaps brought on by a chocolate high, I decided to go for it. I asked for the “trucs.” The man behind the counter was undoubtedly perplexed by my look of utter astonishment when he responded to my truc-inspired sentence by immediately turning around and producing a box full of those thingamajigs. How could he have known that I had just accomplished the impossible?

If The Graduate had been filmed in France, forget “plastic,” the word would have been “truc.” And now you know it too. A toenail of the elephant has been revealed.