Mais Oui

The hardest part of learning new things at my age is breaking old habits and finding memory space to install new ones.

Take typing - looking at the keyboard is second nature to me and I'm finding it next to impossible to remember to return my hands to the starting position. Each day I spent a half hour practicing and it seems that I make no progress. I watch as the words are close to their correct spelling but close only counts in horseshoes and I tend to make the same errors over and over - f's for d's is the most common followed by mixing up the shift and caps keys, followed by trying not to see the tab key as the arch enemy of the keyboard. I watch in awe as friends type with lightning speed, error-less and looking over their shoulder or talking on the 'phone at the same time and again I regret refusing that high school typing class in favor of conversational French. Repetition, they tell me with encouraging smiles, repetition, practice, patience. It will come.

I can't imagine what possible use I thought Conversational French would ever do me but at the time it was romantic and collegiate and only six of us were chosen for the class. English was disallowed from day one - our teacher believed that to learn we had to be emeshed - and he spoke with a liquid fluency and ease that we all envied and tried desperately to emulate. Now I can't remember a single sentence except Dancez avec moi, ma petite chou, a phrase that simply doesn't offer itself up in routine conversations, although it is marginally helpful to be able to comprehend a customer who asks for a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape 1957.

To be intentionally chosen is perhaps all the motivation it takes to make a poor choice, especially if you are young and foolish and have no concept of consequences. Wine and small cabbages aside, the typing class was a far more practical alternative.