Get

Someone's stolen a word from my vocabulary and I'd like it back, please. I think.

The preciseness of the French language continues to challenge and impress me. When was the last time you had a US postal clerk subtly correct your grammar? I can't seem to recall that ever happening in Cleveland, but I did used to get a litany of health complaints from the woman behind the counter.

In France the simple act of buying a stamp can also be a free language lesson. Use "un" instead of "une" incorrectly and the phrase will be repeated with the right article gently but firmly in place.

I'm constantly reminded of my general vagueness, a sloppiness of speech, when faced with the formality of French.

Take, for instance, the word "get." In America, it is the all-purpose verb.

"Hey honey, while you're up could you get me a cold one?"

"What are you getting?" "Oh, I think I'll get the breakfast special."

"When you get done with that could you put some paper in the printer?"

"First I have to get my hair cut."

"Could I get a tall coffee please?"

"You've gotten yourself in a real mess there."

"They just don't get it."

"You got me."

"Get outta here!"

And on and on.

When I'm fumbling around for the right verb in French, I can't seem to find it - because the word I'm looking for is often "get" and that's just not good enough.

I have to think harder.

Do I want to eat? Some form of manger.

Do I want to receive something? Avoirt, or obtenir. Or recevoir.

Do I want to buy something? Acheter. Find something? Trouver, or chercher if I have to look first. And that's before I've even had lunch.

I think I'll make a laminated card of all the possibilities and carry it around with me. But first I may need to re-laminate my personality. Because in America there is a casualness, a built-in familiarity that goes along with even the most anonymous transaction, and it is deeply ingrained.

In the countryside here the transactions are rarely anonymous. The person you buy bread from, the bank teller, the butcher, are people you deal with on a daily basis (well, not the bank teller). But rather than a "hey how ya doin, could you get me one of them big ass loaves of bread over there?" there is a sense of ceremony with greetings exchanged, even handshakes, and, if it's a decent shop, some flourish of pride involved in the simple act of passing a loaf of bread or a package of lamb chops across the counter. Which somehow makes it that much more important to at least attempt to speak correctly, out of respect.

And I thought I was self-conscious before? Some days I feel sure my head is going to explode with the effort of it all.

I have to look at it like if all the world's a stage, in France I'm merely an inept audience member. Occasionally I'm called on to participate in the show. On the worst days I'm in the way, knocking over scenery or possibly giving the cast members something to laugh at. At best I get (damn) right in there with them and for just a moment I add something.

And then I'm getting somewhere.