Ein Junge unter einem Flugzeug.

Are you ever too old to learn a new language?

 

I have no idea, but I am a perpetual student and the fall of leaves and dipping temperatures triggers this deep inate need to study and do homework.  (I think it’s a disease.) 

 

Over the years I’ve taken college courses, completed a Medical Translation program, worked my way through company training programs, attended seminars, struggled through Japanese class, and even studied Pharmacology.

 

Between football, dance, tumbling, snow skiing and boy scouts, 1 college student at a time is all this house can handle… so what’s a girl to do when her fingers start twitching…

 

We’ve cut everything else from raises to employee functions.  Why we have even resisted replacing burned out light bulbs in an effort to cut costs here in my little corner of the corporate world.  I guess it’s small consolation that they’ve opened the corporate training library, but to a girl on an already stretched education budget it’s a perfect way to go back to school without, well, going back to school.

So… I’m learning German. 

 

Interesting. 

 

I don’t speak any other language but English.   Which could be a truly tragic commentary on education during the 70’s and 80’s in rural America I suppose, but more likely on my own lack of adolescent diligence or determination.   

 

I did, in fact, take a year of Spanish in high school, at the end of which I earned a barely-passing grade, the ability to count to 20 and one and only one sentence, “No mi gusto lavar los platos”.  It seemed important at the time. 

Now, I’m spending my evenings “playing” Rosetta Stone, German Level 1 on my computer.

The other night I sat diligently clicking my way through Chapter 1, Lesson 1:   “Ein Junge unter einem Flugzeug.”      correct.

 

 …  when Kelley came through the room, heard me repeating my little phrases and,

 

in the wisdom of a 14-year-old who passed a year of German at school with an A+ and learned such useful things as “Hello, my name is….. ” he asked,

 

“Why would a boy be under an airplane?”

 

I don’t know.  But I can say it if I ever see it.