High school French class has ruined me for other countries.
Featured image by Deposit Photos
My love of France began at sixteen in Mrs. Spangler’s class sometime in the ’80s.
Our lessons were delivered with practicality but sprinkled with the sparkling dust of her enchantment. Her eyes lit up when she told us about this place that none of us had ever been and most would never see. As a result of her deep love of France–its food, locales, and history–she imbibed every lesson with her passion for the subject and ignited a lifelong yearning in me.
I’m a military brat whose family never lived overseas. I know what you’re thinking: Living in another country is the best part of being a military brat! It’s what makes all the sacrifice worthwhile. Without international experience, I was just a stateside outsider. A bird without wings. A club song with no bass.
Because I was deficient in international travel I was probably overeager to indulge in the study of what I’d missed out on.
At school, I was a bit of an alien. Perhaps that was why French class was so special to me. Some of the kids felt the same way about people in other countries and the enemy of my enemy and all that…
To some of my classmates, the people in the films speaking a different language were outsiders; their lives and our lives would never intersect, in their minds.
I knew otherwise. Military bases were full of families that had connected along the way from one base to another, one country to another, one language to another.
Though new, my love of France was strong and true.
A tiny cluster of us nerdy little outsiders couldn’t imagine wanting to be anyplace else, our love of France deepening with every new discovery. To us the films were magical, the literature exciting, and the language flowed like a sonnet.
My introduction to French literature was via film in the 1974 adaptation of the classic children’s novel, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Here’s a blast from the past in this scene with Gene Wilder, who was great in everything, as the fox. Could anything possibly be more 70’s?
She also turned us on to Gérard Depardieu with Danton, a historical drama based on one of the architects of the French Revolution–a classic to anyone who’s taken high school French. This is the dubbed version; the French version sounds so much better. Everything sounds better in French.
I was at a difficult time when I walked into Mrs. Spangler’s class, torn between wanting to hold onto my “otherness” and trying to conform to a new life. That class gave me space to be the nerdy geek I was for 10% of the day and respite from 90% of trying to fit in.
Oh, how I wish I’d known conformity wasn’t really a choice–you can’t be what you aren’t. That 90% effort … wasted! But in that class about a country on the other side of the world I learned that ten minutes into a foreign-language film you don’t even notice you’re reading subtitles. And I learned that the unrelatable is sometimes more relatable than your neighbors and friends.
Because I’ve decided to take that trip in 2022 I’m in a headspace to talk about my love of France. My apologies in advance, but I’ll be writing several posts about my country crush. Someday I’ll visit and then I’ll stop writing about it. Maybe…
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