Maybe I am getting sick. Maybe I am just getting old. But I feel like I have been run over by a herd of grizzly bears. I got in yesterday morning, by the time I got to my apartment, it was 10am. The woman I live with had a vase of cottage roses waiting for me in my room, and a new-to-me duvet. So I started unpacking, decided that was a stupid venture, showered and went to bed. For three hours. Because I didn’t sleep on the plane– at all. But then I had to get up and go straight to take an archaeology oral final in a language I had not spoken in two and a half weeks? Bad, bad idea. Whatever, I got myself there, to the Michelet building, and I wish there were words to describe this place. It is a building off of a public library, Lord only knows what it is supposed to be used for, but it is about three blocks from the restaurant district in the Latin Quarter (named for the language, not the region of Central America). I walk into the public library by accident first, which has these creaky iron doors at least twice as tall as me and twice as thick (this place had to have been some kind of medieval fortress– it’s only a couple blocks from the ruins of ancient 1st-century Paris). So then I am trying to figure out where I am going but all I see is a statue of Tiberius from ancient Rome... Emory has a cast of the same statue in the art history department building, but as I look around the Michelet building here in Paris, I realized that the statue here is likely the original, as the building appears at least that old. I found a passageway to the building next door, and then took a creaky cast-iron elevator to the top floor. When the doors open there, I am faced with this monstrous hallway stretching before me for what looked like kilometers. Apparently I just have an irrational fear of long hallways devoid of people, but it kind of creeped me out. All the doors were shut, and all I could hear was my heels tapping against the hardwood floor. Peeling paint. Tall doorframes on each side of me. I get to the end of the hallway and see a tiny handwritten sign directing me to the left, where another hallway stretches endlessly. This one, though, is lined on one side by windows that I can’t see out of because of the weird glare, but they stretch to the ceiling, at least 10 feet above my head. Finally I make it to the end of that hallway, and there is nothing there but a chair and an unlabeled door. Now, I have a completely rational fear of chairs sitting in the middle of nowhere by themselves. It probably has something to do with the place I worked last summer, but that is another story for another day. So trying not to be scared, I listened at the door of the unlabeled room, trying to determine if there was anyone inside. Hearing nothing, I sit down in the empty chair and try to review my notes... because... oh yeah, those three hours I slept? Those were my study hours. Thus I had somehow managed not to study... again. Ten minutes later my prof comes out and I am sitting there, probably looking sheepish, and he immediately starts speaking at me in rapid-fire French.
"FOCUS, B, JUST FOCUS!" I think to myself.
"Vous pouvez entrer maintenant pour votre examen orale, si vous voulez. Choisissez une option ici et puis vouz avez quinze minutes pour decider ce que vous voulez dire pour une presentation sur ca. D’accord?" Or something like that, he blurts out. I make my best, "I understand but will you please say that again" face, but it doesn’t work and I am stuck trying to figure out what to do. I notice the pack of Camels on the desk and all I can think is "perhaps I ought to take up smoking because maybe then when things like this happen and I have no way to respond, I could just take a drag and it would give me another moment to think. I wonder if he’d let me bum one? NO, NO, NO! Forget that plan! No ciggies! Just because all the French do it does not mean it is a good idea. They also drink coffee out of bowls. Shoot, he is still waiting for an answer..." But out loud all I say is "Ok... ca va bien." "Alright, that sounds good." And then choose a topic. Wonder of wonders, it is one I actually know about (or so I thought), and he looks disappointed that I have chosen it. Incidentally, it was the same building about which he called on me during class in November sometime, and I still didn’t know any more about the dagnab peristyle au fond. Anyway, I take my moment to prepare and then start talking about it, and he keeps writing things down as I speak and interrupting with "Ahh, oui!" and "Exactement!" enough that I know I am doing decently well. Then when I finish, he says, in French, "You mentioned that this room is a cubiculum. Are you sure about that?" But whenever a teacher asks that, you know that you, in fact, were not sure at all, despite how fervently you believed it three minutes ago while in the midst of your presentation. So I figure out what that room actually was, but in the process have to use the word for "roof." Now, this should not be a problem, right? I know words like that. BUT the thing is that the word for roof sounds very much like a dirty word in English. So I rarely use it. Actually, I have never used it. Because I can’t say it without thinking of the dirty English word, which makes me afraid I am going to pronounce it wrong and people will misunderstand. Gravely. And I definitely don’t want to make that error in front of my terribly glamourous French archaeology prof, so I rack my brain for another word. "Ceiling? No, I don’t know that word. Wall? No, he will have no idea what I am talking about. I got it! Top!" So I say something about the top of the building and he says, "Oui," and repeats the word for roof at me, clearly expecting me to repeat it, which usually I would do without hesitation, but this time I can’t do it with a straight face because it suddenly occurs to me that we are nothing but two 20-somethings sitting in the back deserted room of an ancient building in the middle of Paris at 630 on a Friday night talking about... well... I can’t even say it in English, but you get the idea. Something bad. So I look at him and try to remember that he has probably never even heard the word in English and so even if I mispronounce it, he won’t notice. But remember, this is the same professor to whom I asked, with regard to this exam, in a moment of language-barrier induced confusion, "do you want me?" and the thought of that freezes me up even more. But he is still looking at me waiting for me to repeat the word and go on with the sentence, and I can’t do it. I put on my best, "I still know what I am talking about even if it doesn’t seem like it" face, smile graciously, thank him, and continue, all without using the dreaded word.
Eventually I finish my explanation, and he says, "Very good, only why did you start at the back of the building? It would make much more sense to start from the front and work your way back..." and that was his biggest criticism. He gave me a nice speech about how difficult it must be, and taking that into account he was going to give me a 15. A 15 in France is like... I think... the highest B one can achieve (not to mention over twice as good as the grade I got on the written midterm I didn’t study for), so I was thrilled. I must not have looked it, though, and so he tried to explain... "15 in France, what is that like in the US? You use all those silly letter grades, so what would this be?" And so we sat there, with the Eiffel Tower blinking far out the window behind him, discussing the grading system in the US versus France, and then the fact that people in the Roman Empire ate in the same position in which they had orgies. Lovely, I don’t know how he knew that one, but it came up because he said I had described the triclinium wrongly. "It’s not just the dining room, it’s also the room where they hosted the orgies." I must have looked shocked, and he said, "That is why there were three walls of long benches all the way around. So people could lay on them while their servants fed them grapes." At least I think that is what he said. I kind of got distracted after the orgy part, which I only understood because it is pronounced the same in both languages.
From my favorite movie, paraphrased for this situation: "Honestly, anyone who can’t handle making a fool of themselves doesn’t deserve to [learn another language]."
Making a fool of myself daily in the name of Americans everywhere,
B