"Dad, he said that to you"

Learning a second language is a truly humbling experience. To be quite honest, the word "humbling" is not nearly strong enough of a word to use. Over the last six months I have thought of many other words that better describe the experience (I only thought the words because to actually speak them out loud would surely damage my witness!), but you get the idea. It is humbling.

Let me share with you a brief snapshot to illustrate my point:

Last Thursday our family went to the annual "La Fete du Lac des Nations" here in Sherbrooke. It is sort of like a big carnival or fair with a lot of singing and fireworks every night. A pretty cool experience for the family for an evening.

Like most carnivals, there was a section with various vendors who were demonstrating their merchandise and eager to talk with those that passed by. One such vendor was selling wooden toys and was all too ready to place a toy in the hands of my oldest two children for them to give a test-drive. It was a wooden ball attached to a stick by a string with a cup-like apparatus on the end. The goal was to catch the ball in the cup.

Now don't forget that we live in Quebec and that they speak French in Quebec. (This fact will be very important for the rest of the story.)

During his sales-pitch he showed us that while the toys with the painted wooden balls looked much flashier, those that were plain, unpainted wood worked just as well. And of course, they were cheaper. In an attempt to hold our attention and get in the most words he could while we stood before him, he spoke incredibly fast. I must admit, I was not really able to understand everything that he said. I knew it had something to do with the wooden ball, paint, and him wanting our money.

Later that evening, as we waited for the fireworks to begin, Thea started talking with me about the wooden toy. She said, "It is cool that you can paint those wooden balls with finger nail polish and it will create a hard shell around them. But only one coat or two at the most because more than that and it will throw off the weight of the ball and make it more difficult to catch in the cup."

As I looked at her with my infamous "what-on-earth-are-you-talking-about" look, I said, "How do you know so much about that toy?" She said, "Dad, he said that to you. That is what he told you when we were talking to him. You didn't get that?"

No, I did not get that. But I am glad that my nine year old did. And I hope that one day soon I will be able to get. But until that day, and I am sure many, many years afterward, I will remain humbled by our quest to learn a new language. And I will always make sure that I travel with Ezra or Thea to help me get it!