How to Fail High School French
In three steps
Tu parles français ?
Bien sûr !
Je touche mon nez.
Je touche mes lèvres.
Ouvre la porte.
Ouvre la fenêtre.
Voyez ce stylo, j’écris dans un cahier.
Voyez cette jolie fille...
God, she’s stunning!!
Wait, what was the lesson?
Quand est la sortie scolaire ?
Maybe I can sit next to her...
What? Uh, yes, ma’am...
Touchez mon nez,
Touchez mon nez,
Ouvrez la porte.
I didn’t really want to learn French in high school. I wanted the prestige of speaking a language like French. I was too smart for my own good—or rather, I’d coasted too long on being bright without being diligent, and by my junior year, I was lazy.
Even as my drive for school was tanking, my drive for sex was doing the opposite. I was getting dumber and hornier. In other words: typical teenager.
So, naturally, it seemed like a genius idea to take a class just because a girl I had a crush on was in it.
Melissa M., one in a long line of teen beauties who captivated me despite my personal vows to stay footloose, fancy-free, and chaste. My mind wanted one thing. My body? A whole lot of other stuff.
Melissa was tall—5’8”—athletic, Hispanic, and rich. A striking combination. She had this olive skin tone I still associate with summer, even now, as an old man. She carried herself like she couldn’t be bothered to stand up straight—too cool to try. Her hair was long, dark, and impossibly straight, falling to her hips like a scarf in a breeze.
She always wore long wrap skirts that clung like a sideways hug, and oversized cable-knit sweaters, even when the weather didn’t call for them. My heart was hers the day she turned sixteen and her dad bought her a ’78 Corvette convertible. She had it all.
And I had nothing.
Our families knew each other, but we weren’t friends. I was her invisible admirer. And while I doubt my crush was much of a secret, I was just a poor white kid on the edge of her orbit. I had watched her from childhood through our freshman and sophomore years. Then I heard—probably through my mom—that Melissa was taking French.
That did it.
I’d always wanted to learn a cool foreign language. French, the so-called language of love (though Ricky’s mom in Better Off Dead had other ideas). And some of the foreign exchange girls at school spoke French—many of them très mignonnes.
Then I found out that, if you made it through French II senior year, you could go on a week-long class trip to Paris over spring break. That was the trifecta:
Impress girls with my continental charm.
See the Louvre. Maybe get cultured.
Spend a week chasing Melissa around Europe like a lost puppy with a phrasebook.
How could I go wrong?
I practically fell over myself getting into French I that fall. It took some wrangling, but I found out what period she had and managed to sneak into the same class: 5th period French.
Week one, I felt pretty good. Our last names were alphabetically close, so I figured I’d be seated near her. Perfect—just enough proximity to win her heart with wit and well-timed sighs.
Fail Number One: seating roulette. Turns out the second letters of our last names landed her at the back of the class with the cool kids, and me in the front row, next aisle over—square in the firing line of the instructor. I would go on to benefit my classmates greatly by providing a living, breathing example of how not to speak French.
Fail Number Two: Melissa was never, ever going to be interested in a greasy-haired, kind-hearted, Bible-reading artist from the wrong side of the tracks. She was polite enough not to be cruel, but we were never going to have that movie-montage friendship where she discovers the “real me” and falls hopelessly in love. The more she gently friend-zoned me, the more distracted I became. I wasn’t in that class to learn—I was there for a dream that was crumbling fast.
One afternoon after school, I came out to find my ten-speed had a flat tire. I was unlocking it, getting ready to push it home, when Melissa strolled out with her cool-girl entourage.
We made eye contact.
“Oh, hey Melissa! Got a flat,” I said, trying to sound upbeat.
“Oh, bummer,” she replied coolly.
“Yeah, gonna push it home.” (I thought maybe she’d offer me a ride. No such luck.)
An awkward pause.
“Well, be careful,” she said, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear as the fall breeze danced around us.
She turned to leave.
“Say,” I blurted out, interrupting her escape, “I don’t suppose you could give me a lift? Even partway—it’s on your way.”
She paused, then turned slightly. “Uhhhh… I wish I could. But I have plans right after school. And I couldn’t put your bike in my car anyway.”
“Oh yeah, yeah!” I chirped, way too enthusiastically. “Of course! Don’t worry about it. Not a big deal at all. You go do your thing. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”
She gave me a quick, sympathetic half-smile and walked off, faster this time. I didn’t even get the chance to say I could lock the bike up and just ride with her.
That was the moment it really hit me. I’d built a whole internal scheme on the idea that, once she got to know me, she’d see what the other girls saw—a kind friend, maybe even someone worth dating. But Melissa wasn’t interested in discovering anything about me. I wasn’t even in her mental rolodex.
Fail Number Three: actually failing. Turns out I didn’t want to learn a language. I wanted to draw, to paint, to sculpt, to ride my bike and read fantasy and sci-fi. French class was just a roadblock I’d willingly run into.
By midterm, my teacher pulled me aside and gently suggested I switch electives.
“What about the class trip?” I asked, still clinging to that dream.
“Oh, mon Dieu. Eh bien, c’est peu probable,” she sighed. “You’d have to do so well next semester that it cancels out your failing grade, and then make it into the top ten who get selected for the trip. It just doesn’t seem likely.”
That was news to me. All that effort, and I was going to spend 45 minutes a day in a class I didn’t care about, with no trip and no girl.
So I dropped it. Walked away at the midterm. Melissa still floated by from time to time in the halls, but I barely existed before. Now I was invisible again.
The things young men do! Our logic is questionable on the best days, and downright foolish most of the time.
A few years ago, I ran into Melissa’s grandmother. Sounded like Melissa’s life hadn’t turned out like her high school image. At my age, she was finishing her third marriage and trying to get stable again. Her parents had split long ago, the family scattered. It was sad to hear.
In high school, we think life will be a shinier, richer version of what we experienced there. But usually, it’s not. For most people, it’s a little worse. Unless you treat school for what it actually is: an education. A starting point. Then life becomes something else—a journey of discovery, a chance to explore the world and the people in it.
And the beauty of that approach is, if you look for the best in everything, you almost always find it.
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