I got to French class early and was going to get coffee, but realized that I had left my university ID behind and would have to sign in as a guest, so I skipped it and went straight up.

When I got to class, I realized I had also left my textbook home, and had to photograph the page with the homework assignments on it from a classmate’s text and start doing the homework, because I had been away from class the week before and I don’t have anyone’s number.

The abrasive woman sitting the other side of me noticed that I was writing with an Apple Pencil on my iPad, and commented that she didn’t have good handwriting any more because she doesn’t practice it. I told her I used to teach handwriting, and showed her my handwritten journal. Because someone left some sobriety-related stickers on the table at a recent AA meeting, I had a “SOBER” sticker on the front of the journal.

“Are you in AA? I’m in a 12-step program,” the abrasive woman said. “OA. 39 years.”

“Wow, I didn’t know it had been around that long,” I said. “I have 52 years? I think?” I always have to calculate it in my head because 1973 is a long time ago and I keep getting my sobriety date mixed up with my wedding date, which was three years after I stopped drinking and so is also a long time ago. Also, my husband is dead, which makes the length of my marriage no longer a thing I have to calculate any more. It will be 46 years forever.

I swiftly did the homework, resorting to copying out the answers from the back of the book after a certain point, because the topic was something I wasn’t sure of and the instructor likes to go around the room having people answer the questions one by one. I concentrated on at least knowing the answers to the question I was going to be answering. I managed to get the whole thing done eventually, and survived. Then he started asking us to do questions on the board.

By now, I felt as if I didn’t know anything at all, so I kept my head down, but eventually he glared at me and I had to go up, confessing I didn’t know what I was doing. He gave me a sentence in English, “I will try although I’m afraid,” and I wrote on the board, “J’essaierai bien que j’aie peur,” which I notice is incorrect because the subjunctive in French generally doesn’t apply in complex sentences when the subject is the same thing. However, the instructor said, “Perfect.”

Someone asked if “essaierai” (from the verb “essayer”) could have a “y” in it, and he looked at my sentence on the board, bemusedly, and said, “No.” He mostly doesn’t torture me.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing,” I said to the abrasive woman, and she did not understand that I was speaking in a much more global sense and helpfully explained the rules we were following. I will have to sit somewhere else next time because I don’t really want her noticing me any more.

After class, a new student was asking about other French courses available in our area (these people are taking a whole lot of French, I notice, plus Spanish), and I said her French was pretty good.

“I learned it a long time ago,” she said. “Now I can’t speak it at all. I freeze up.”

I nodded vehemently. I learned everything a long time ago, and now, very often, I don’t know that I know it.

I will try, although I am afraid.