This past Tuesday, my senior citizen French class determinedly powered through our homework on reflexive verbs, catching up on the part we didn’t get to last time. We went over this week’s homework, such gems as, “Le petit Claude s’est mouillé la chemise en buvant un Coca,” (little Claude got his shirt wet drinking Coca-Cola) and narrating the flowering and demise of a relationship, ending sadly, “Ils ont rompu.” (They broke up.)

I tried to sit in front Tuesday for a change, but apparently I had taken the seat permanently claimed by a gentleman of even more advanced age than me, who plopped all his things down in my spot at the table when he arrived, without speaking or meeting my eyes. I moved. There are no assigned seats. 

He was otherwise amiable. In fact, all of us are amiable in an irritable sort of way, which is to say we are outspoken but also amused, cranky with everyone but also kind, and generally set in our ways but also frivolous. 

I am beginning to see why so many people get impatient and contrary as they age. I have been impatient and contrary all my life, to be fair, but there was a long period where I at least tried. Now, I just don’t see the point of not saying what I think. What is the downside of telling the truth? I mean, aside from pissing people off? I piss people off by being old as it is.

Precious little instruction happens in this class, per se, and we all seem to be happy with that. Mostly we just work through the textbook, the instructor berates us, we wobble through our responses with varying degrees of accuracy, and everyone digresses systematically. 

Nick, the instructor, is fond of giving us short “dictées” like “La mère va a la mer avec le maire” (The mother goes to the sea with the mayor) and inscrutable clichés like “Il y a un anguille sous roche,” (something fishy’s going on, literally “There’s an eel under the rock”), whereupon one of our members demands out of the blue, “What is the word for cell phone?” And then everyone loses the thread for a few minutes while we discuss something entirely different from mayors, eels or even cell phones.

I am the only new student in the group, and I suspect our instructor has been progressing through the textbook, from the beginning, for the last eight years, whether anyone is new or not. 

(New here? Good. We are doing reflexive verbs. Try to keep up.)

One of the regulars sitting in the back was not feeling great on Tuesday, and the instructor said, “What’s the matter? Brain not functioning?” He meant it as a genuine question, and she admitted her brain was not, in fact, functioning. She said she didn’t feel well. Later, she said, “Je vais partir,” and suited her action to the words, leaving. 

I was glad I had remembered to wear my N95 mask. I didn’t want to catch what she had, whatever it was. I’m too old for that shit. I prefer any death I encounter to be a surprise rather than a predictable outcome.

I have the great and satisfying joy of being competent in this class. The instructor could find very little to criticize in my responses on Tuesday, though by god he gave it his best shot. And when we were all suffering through writing our answers to questions on the board one by one, I wrote clearly, with the correct conjugation and appropriate accent marks, and made no errors. I sat down again, and the gentleman sitting across from me said, “You ought to do all the writing on the board, because you use your teacher handwriting,” and I grinned and said, “Not gonna happen.”

I love the class. It’s as if I am getting to enjoy high school, finally, sixty years late. 

I don’t even care if I ever learn any French. I was terribly unhappy in high school, and I’m getting a do-over.