Tuesdays this fall, I get to be competent. It’s a lovely feeling.

One of the things I do on Tuesdays is go to French class, where I’m one of the better students, because of three years of high school French and two years of solitary study.

Other people in the class think I’m pretty good at it, but like most sensible human beings, I know how much I don’t know.

Yesterday, it was the third class of the French course. I’m new to the class, and most of the others are repeat students, but it follows a predictable format. First, we go through the homework, the teacher calling on us one at a time to supply our answers. As we hesitantly read our sentences, he interrupts, corrects, restates, digresses, mishears, and criticizes both the responding student and the entire class. In other words, it’s rather like French class was in high school. I don’t know what it is about the French teachers I have had. They are impatient, moderately contemptuous, and perpetually annoyed, but they don’t seem to be horrible.

Our class is all elderly people, including the instructor, so instead of shutting down when he grumbles at us, we start giggling. We talk back. We expostulate, and ask questions.

The students generally agree that the instructor is sweet. The instructor seems perfectly happy to ignore our misbehavior.

Yesterday, one very able student said abruptly, “Why is it ‘se laver’ in this sentence instead of ‘me laver?’ I don’t understand.”

The instructor started to say something, but I interrupted. “‘Se laver’ is an infinitive. The infinitive is the name of the verb. It’s not the verb. It never changes.”

And she said, “Oh, that’s better, now I get it,” and nobody took offense, not even the instructor. We moved on.

They did laugh about me in the previous class when I muttered the words “phrasal verb,” and one of the three men in the class asked me to spell it and wrote it down. “I was an English teacher,” I admitted, and someone in the back said, “We know,” and everyone chuckled.

There is only one other woman who is new to the class, like me. She sits in the front row with her homework, following along carefully, but she refuses to answer any of the homework questions. The teacher passes over her kindly, for which I award him extra points.

At the end of class yesterday, she burst out that she didn’t know what she was doing, and that everyone here knew so much. She didn’t feel like she belonged.

I leaned forward and tapped her shoulder. “I was really afraid when I started the class,” I said.

“You? But you know more than anybody!” she said.

“Yeah, I took French in high school. It was a long time ago. When I started class, I was so afraid I wouldn’t fit in. But I’m an English teacher, so I can sort of figure out a lot of it.” I didn’t mention that I have been studying French on my own with an app and with podcasts for two years, or that I was even more afraid than she is of making a fool of myself.

“I was an English teacher,” she admitted.

“There you go,” I exclaimed and that seemed to make sense to her.

And then, she ended up telling me that she lives in a ranch house in one of the outskirts of Philadelphia, and last year she tripped and hurt her tailbone, and couldn’t get up on her own. She’s been recovering all year. I told her I live in a three-story row house in a central Philly neighborhood, and I don’t use my third floor at all because of the stairs.

We both knew what we were talking about. We were talking about being old, helpless, and one injury away from being frail and sick. We were talking about being afraid. Realistically afraid.

A tall thin elderly man was standing on the street the other day talking to two younger people, and as I passed, one of the younger people said, “You’re only as old as you feel.”

I didn’t interrupt. I didn’t tell the guy he didn’t know what he was talking about. The age I feel is maybe 35. That sounds like a nice age. The age I am is 74, and my real age doesn’t care how I feel.

Yes, I’m taking a French class and an art class. Yes, I walk miles every day, and go on regular adventures. Yes, I have a busy social life, volunteer, and am important to a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to be old.

The world is unfriendly to old people, and so are our own bodies, so we might as well admit that and get on with being alive as long as we can.

As long as we don’t trip and fall on that oddly placed little back step in the back yard of our nice little ranch house, or slip in the dust on the wooden stairs at the top floor of our row house because we forgot to wear shoes inside, or trip over a curb while out walking with those nice young friends who tell us we’re only as old as we feel.