"YOU VANT LICK OR SUCK?"

…If, in your head, you heard that uttered in the strict tones of a German Dominatrix, you’d be halfway to correct.  The woman who spoke what for me has become an immortal line was German, she was very dominating, and uber strict. 

Or maybe it was just her accent. 

But in any case, she was a pharmacist.  Offering up a choice of cough drops to some kvetchy Americans with a cold. 

But oh how we laughed, my husband, my daughter, my son.  Oh how we repeated that line “You Vant leeeek? Oder SAAAUUUCK!!?”  It’s impossible to gauge how many times, let’s just go with ‘over and over,’ the woman growing more dominating, more strict, more German with each repetition all through out that Christmas visit to our daughter who lives in Stuttgart (and if repeating ‘You vant lick or suck’ with your kids seems inappropriate, I refer you to the previous post).  

Here’s what’s really inappropriate…we were in Germany.

The poor woman was doing her best to speak our language.

Our daughter has been living in Germany for nearly seven years.

I go there A LOT, and beyond ‘Ausgang’ ‘Bitte’ ‘Danke’ and ‘Schnell!’ I got nuthin’ (And according to my daughter, I plug those words in with an offensive willy-nilly randomness).

Oscar Wilde said: “Life is too short to learn German.”  It’s hard to argue the logic of that, but I do think life’s too long to not learn something besides English.

Turns out I have zero talent for foreign languages.  This is not news to me.  That truth has been self-evident since high school when I broke my French teacher (Monsieur Peterson, if you’re reading this…I’m sorry!!! I mean… J’ai regrette?  No, that’s not right…).  But we split our time between the US and Europe and so about four years ago, fed up with being that mono-linguistic American, I set a goal: fluency in a minimum of two foreign languages before I croak. 

I began with Spanish, convinced that somehow the language of Salvador Dali would be the “easiest”—wha--?   (Next up: Japanese ‘cause that’s so easy too).  I would do this in my spare time (which like my talent for languages, I have none).  Spanish is everywhere I told myself.  My kids went to Spanish Immersion schools, they’ll help me, I reasoned.   I can do this, I affirmed.  I was distracted in high school (unlike now with family, career, life).  How hard can it be?

Two things.  Numero uno: Your first clue would be Salvador-freakin’-Dali.  Right there I could rest my case.  But I got a numero dos: believe me when I say, I am nothing if not Type A.  And hand on my heart, I have never, ever, EVER put so much effort into anything…with so muy muy POCOS resultos! 

But, I’m four years and countless teachers, courses, tapes, computer programs, books, DVD’s, ‘meet-up groups’ (not to mention beaucoup dinero) in.  AND if you dare stop with a language you basically tumble right back to the bottom of the mythical Sisyphus Language Mountain with a boulder where your brain used to be…So I push on.

Currently I’m torturing a lovely man named Ronald in Costa Rica by Skype twice a week in private lessons.  I know repetition is the key to languages—I’ve been told that over and over (ba-dum-ching) but there’s level of  ‘Ground Hog’s Day’ to these bi-weekly sessions that’s just SO out there.  (A film I adore, btw, and whose plot I tried to explain to Ronald in Spanish last week, but it was lost in the…).

Ronald of course is very polite.  He’d never run around over Xmas howling with laughter with his family over dumbass things I say…Ronald really is a much better person than I….Still, I know, oh yes I do… when I try to express ideas like: ‘You really must see ‘Ground Hog’s Day!’ by saying: ‘Tengas que ver ‘El Dia de los Groundhogs!’ well, just by the way Ronald drops his head in his hands and emits a mournful sigh, I know… what I really just said was “You Vant lick?  Or suck?”