Tipping Not Toppling

You know that book, the Tipping Point? Well, when it came out, I found that it was long overdue as the author offered so many explanations for so many things regarding life in general. Reading it, I felt I was constantly saying to myself, "Yes! I get it now." Really, a great book there.

But the books overall utility is not actually why I bring it up. Rather, I recently had my own tipping point. This moment came about when I realized the following three-pronged personal situation: I have been living in France for 5 months, this is the second time in my life that I have lived in Paris, and I have 10 plus years of French classes behind me. Despite all this compiled "immersion, " I still find that my "proficiency" with the language is not actually proficient. In fact, I finally faced the music that it is sort of, what's the word? Oh yes, deplorable.

It definitely seems like a bad sign when you find yourself pointing at items in the bakery because your brain suddenly left the building with Elvis and shows no sign of returning. It is embarassing, and only made more so by the fact that the items have signs posted in front of them, indicating what they all are. Who messes up a dummy proof operation?

No need to actually answer that. I am keenly aware of currently applicable self-labels.

The crazy thing is that the whole ping pong game of "I speak French well/I speak French not so well" that I have been playing since I arrived is that it does not actually move on a forward trajectory. It is like I am stuck in French language pergatory, and never seem to make any discernible progress. Discernible regression though? Yup, I have seen promising signs of such. So at least there is movement of some kind. How encouraging.

Although, to be slightly more generous towards myself, I am also dealing with a rather wiley beast here. Being able to successfully speak French in France is dependent on a few factors panning out smoothly, all at the same time. There is this crazy equation that seems to exist. It is comprised of personal confidence + the willingness of the other party to allow you to try + the willingness of the other party to even acknowledge that you, as a non French person are actually still a human being deserving of some respect + your actual proficiency with the language. If any of these key ingredients is a tad "off" for whatever reason, well then you can expect a big fat zero in terms of your "solution."

So you know that saying: two steps forward, one step back? Well I have recently been feeling like my French progress was two steps forward, Lance Armstrong on a bicycle back.

My "tipping point" came earlier this month and I thus decided that I needed to stop pantomiming at the bakery and to take matters into my own hands. Thus, I signed up to take actual bonafide French classes.

Up to this point, I have been seeing a tutor every week. And Pierre (my aptly named French tutor), is certainly lovely. But Pierre wants to help me with my accent and to shoot the breeze. These are useful things to be certain, but I need to really tackle the foundation of the language (yet again) so that I can build up, rather than to just keep acquiring random phrases and then spitting them out at (often inopportune) moments like some sort of socially challenged borderline autistic person.

What I think I realized was that I needed was structure. So, even though I am pretty sure my tear-stained memories of public humiliation courtesy of Madame Robino, Madame Jordan, and Madame Polyenko are at peast partially responsible for the post traumatic stress disorder I was treated for in the early 2000's, I knew that the time had come to face my nemesis.

French Grammar, I am ready to fight you to the death.

Or at least ready to give you another whirl.

So I am taking a class right now that meets three times a week for three hours a day. This will go on for four weeks. After that I plan to take an evening class for two hours, two times a week, and will do that for a couple of months. If I do not understand how to utilize two pronouns correctly in one sentence by the time April arrives then I will officially be declaring myself incompetent.

And...if I can engage in brief small talk with the people at the bakery by next month without breaking into a sweat and developing a stutter, then you will be the first to know.

My tipping point will not topple; je vais le faire!