Speaking French ... sort of

I read a story on Literal Minded about a friend of Neal's saving his yard with broken Spanish. For some reason it reminded me of this incident, which happened to me back in 1978, in Berlin, when I was in the army.

Background - I took French in elementary school. Everyone in the city took either French or Spanish, depending on the school. We were learning French as part of some nationwide validation of a new way to teach foreign languages - don't remember what the method was but it was awful. We all hated it. Lien and the Thibaults... pfui. I even studied German as soon as I could switch - not because of anything intrinsic to German, but because I knew that the Germans hated the French. So by the time I was in the army I had forgotten what little French they'd manage to teach me. (The program was discredited nationwide, by the way.)

So - Berlin was, at the time, still an occupied city inside East Germany. US Sector, British Sector, French Sector ... Soviet Sector. Wall through the city. Allied soldiers everywhere. We could all shop in each others' PXs and so on - the French Officers Club was open to us - if we didn't go in uniform, we enlisted soldiers (or 'other ranks') - and their food was exquisite. But some Americans couldn't get over themselves.

I was in the PX one day and this young French soldier was in the electronics department buying a stereo - or trying to. He was about sixteen - okay, probably older, but still quite young. He'd clearly been saving up for this for a long time. He was paying with a stack of twenty-dollar bills that had been folded up small - obviously he'd been getting dollars every time he was paid and then tucking them away somewhere until he had enough. He had enough - that wasn't the problem.

The problem was the young American women working the register. She was insisting that he fill out the registration card. Except he didn't speak English and she didn't speak French. She was practicing the good old speak-louder-and-louder-and-he'll-understand-you school of international communications and it was working as well as it usually does, and he was nearly in tears; clearly he thought he couldn't buy the stereo if he couldn't fill out this form.

So I stepped up with my truly awful French. "Name" was easy enough. Residence - that's "domicile", or at least that worked. It was his service number that was tricky. But he was awfully willing to understand me, so when I tried "nombre de service" - which I was sure wasn't it - he got the idea. (It's some form of "matriculation", as I recall.) When he got it filled out and left, clutching his stereo, I looked at the clerk.

"For crying out loud," I started.

"I know," she agreed promptly. "I wish they wouldn't come in here! They've got their own store."

She was some officer's brat, I'm sure. You got to recognize them. So I just shook my head and left (hey, I was a Spec 4 back then). Now I'd tell her he had every right to shop there, and wonder whether she turned down the French OC... and then talk to her boss.

But what I remember most is how easy it was to find a way to explain that form to him - if you wanted to.