Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

The French language and I have been at odds for years, decades even.

I took French in high school, but I have no memory of it. I don’t even remember who my teacher was or who was in my class. In fact, did I even take French in high school? I’ll have to ask Marian, my friend with the best memory!

I took French in college, nearly every semester for four straight years, because I kept registering and dropping it each semester until I finally managed to get the “good” teacher, and by “good” I mean “easy.” That still wasn’t enough though. On the day of the final exam, I presented him with several bottles of my Uncle Guy’s (in the French rhymes with “key” not “sky”) homemade orange wine, made from his own oranges grown at Songy’s Evergreen. Decent grade: secured. French skills mastered: zip.

When we were preparing to move overseas for two years, to the French-speaking region of Belgium, I took French at the county rec. center. It was a night class, I was working full time, had a 4th grader and a 6th grader, and not enough hours in the day to really give it the effort it required. No further progress made.

And then, after moving to Belgium, I took French for about six months at Call International language school in the little commune we lived in – Waterloo, as in the Battle of – where I was one of three students in the class. One was a sophisticated woman from Argentina and the other was a vivacious woman from Nicaragua. While I came away with the perfect method for making dulce de leche and the equally perfect recipe for tortilla española (potato omelet), I learned only the most basic of French phrases.

My most successful French phrase, at least the one I used on repeat, was this one, “J’ai un petit problème,” which means “I have a small problem.”  Stéphane, our French instructor, told me I could use this for small, every day problems, like returning something at the grocery store, or sending a dish back at a restaurant. It is probably the most important thing he taught me (or at least the most important thing I learned) and I bandied it about right and left during our two years there.

One particular time I used it was during a very stressful episode when I was called to pick up my younger daughter from school because her hand was hurting. The nurse wanted me to take her for an X-ray because she (the nurse) was positive that she (my daughter) had a broken bone in her hand from a can of pineapples the night before falling off of a high shelf and hitting her hand on the way down. I was positive she didn’t have a serious injury as she had not mentioned a word about it that morning getting ready for school, but the nurse strongly suggested I come right away and pick her up.

It was almost time for dismissal which meant that the rush hour traffic was just starting. I had to call the school and ask for my older daughter to be dismissed early as well since the nearest place to get the X-ray without a previous appointment was about 45 minutes away. So, once I had both girls in the car, I started out for a hospital I had never visited in a town I had never driven to in a country where I didn’t grow up.

I had written directions, printed out off of MapQuest as this was before I had access to any navigational system. Just as we started out, it began to rain, and soon, it began to sleet, and then – I mean, why not? – it began to hail. Hail the size of ping pong balls started pounding the windshield and roof of my second hand standard transmission German-made Ford Escort. The skies continued to darken and soon I was hopelessly lost. I made u-turns and left-turns and right-turns until finally, finally we saw signage for the hospital.

There was no sign indicating parking or anywhere near the front entrance that looked like parking, and it was still pouring rain. I decided to drive around the back of the hospital to see if there was parking in the rear.

I turned onto what I thought was a side street and after a few minutes I was in a one-lane enclosed tunnel-like concrete structure. I exited into what appeared to be the ambulance bay at the rear of the hospital, where I screeched to a halt right behind an ambulance unloading a patient on a gurney.

As I was still in a semi-enclosed driveway, there was no way around the ambulance so I just sat there, trying to figure out what to do. There was absolutely no way on God’s sopping wet earth that I could back out of the place I was in.

After a few minutes, a man in a uniform came to my car door and motioned for me to put the window down. He just stared at me, so I whipped out my one tried and true phrase, “J’ai un petit problème,” to which he replied, “Non, madame, vous avez un gros problème.”

This whole time my girls were sitting dead quiet in the back seat. He looked at them, and then he looked at me, tears welling in my eyes, and explained to me in 3rd grade English that I would have to wait until the ambulance exited, and then I could make my way out of this prohibited area. Do not come in this area again, he reinforced, somewhat more sternly.

Spoiler: there was no broken bone.

After several hours of waiting to be X-rayed, and several hours waiting for the X-ray to be read, we were told to ice her hand for a few days and administer paracetamol (Tylenol) as needed for the bruised area. (I knew it wasn’t broken!)

I’ve been fortunate enough to visit France now about half a dozen times, and still I can’t manage a single complete sentence.

Other than being able to expertly read a menu in a French restaurant …

… or cook from a French recipe, or read the labels of cans and boxes at the grocery store in France and Belgium, I remain hopeless. Je suis désespéré. It is the one thing I wish I could conquer. I don’t have to be able to read Camus in his native tongue; I just want to be able to manage small talk when I’m meeting a new French friend.

PS: While the French language is frequently murdered when I attempt to speak it, my good friend Google Translate helped me with my poor attempts to include some French words here. Bien à vous, mes amis.