Infantilization (i.e. I'm not ready to talk about the election yet)

(Somewhere in the back of my head, Switz.) - Until recently I haven't been able to precisely place what was so familiar to me about this experience of being constantly disoriented and inarticulate whilst living in a country where my language skills are marginal. It is fascinating and invigorating, but also tiring and ...

... Mary-Lou Weisman had an article in the NYtimes a few weeks back about the experience of spending a late summer in the south of France, renting a house and learning the language. She hit upon exactly what I had been groping towards.

"I worried about being disoriented and inarticulate, conditions I had spent my entire adult life avoiding. Being in control was practically the whole point of being a grown-up, wasn't it? Why would I purposely make myself stupid?"

That was it. Being abroad in a country where I didn't speak the language was the experience of continual regression. I had become a child again. After 32 years, I had picked up and put myself 'plonk' down in the middle of somewhere where - using the usual standards - I couldn't really function as an adult. Mind you I am not a newborn babe in swaddeling clothes as I can kinda get around, assert myself, and I know some words, but by and large I need someone to look out for me, tell me where to go, and basically hold my hand while crossing the street. I am probably about 3. Using little words when I can, pointing and grunting when I can't, being constantly trundled off in random directions without my approval (by parents when we are 2, by getting on the wrong bus when we are 32), sometimes throwing a tantrum when I don't get our way, and after learning a new word - using it every concievable circumstance, the whole thing is an experience of being ... infantilized.

Last week I went to take a French placement test for a language class, I will take at Geneva's Université Populaire. It was the first of many retro-humbling experiences I will get with retaking French after 15 years I'm sure. I had thought that since I did take 5 years of high-school and middle school French (never worked at it too much though) and have been able to mangle the language around town for the last month I would fair OK and might test into the 2nd class in the sequency. Nope.

Not even close. I stared at the sheet for 1o minutes, chickenscratched some 'not-even-wrong' answers into the blocks, stared some more, then raised the white flag and told Christiane (a friend of a friend from LA who works at the UP) that "ahhh.... I think I will start with the easy one." It was just like high school. So that is a step back 15 years, but it continues.

Later that night was my first class. I was to debut as a 'Debutante 1' at Uni-Bastions. This is in one of the University's oldest and most forbidable looking buildings.

So as usual, running late, I zoom across town to get there (UniGe is decentralized over much of Geneva's westside. Although the origins of the university date to Calvin, most of it is newer and hence buildings were fit where there was available space over the town). It is late, I show my student pass at the door and ask the guard where my class was. He speaks little English and shows frustration at my French skills ("gimme a break buddy... I am here FOR my French lesson...grrrrr"). I work my franglais, and grunt and point at the receipt I got earlier in the day. He understands, gives me a pat on the head and sends me on my way. I think I find the room. It's one floor above - up past huge winding marble steps and grand granite hall accented with busts of distinguished professors long gone. I find the room... but noone is home. Hallloooo... noone home. check the number. yep right place (i think). Try to ask guard, with little results.... hmmm... now I am REALLY late.

I look at my ticket (mon billet en francais) for the class and take a double take...hrmmphh ... premiere classe novembre 15th. No wonder Christiane had looked at me quizically, but nodded in the affirmative after telling me the class was on lundi and mecredi and I asked "Mercredi est aujourd'hui?". It wasn't that I used the wrong words, or it was the wrong time for similar words, but it wasn't right altogether and so they came out in a way that was only right for a question that I didn't mean to ask. Like a 3 year old I know what I want, but I don't quite seem to be able to convey it to my satisfaction. So I cry alot. And stamp my feet.

So why do it at all? Why bother? Madame Weisman answers, "Because ... by putting myself in the circumstances of a small child, I retrieved what I was sure I had lost forever - the unalloyed enthusiasm a child feels when exploring and mastering the world."

She is right. Having learned electrodynamics, relativity, and the intracies of quantum mechanics, it is fantastic to get to go back and feel the "inordinate thrill" and satisfaction of learning how to tie my proverbial shoes again (only this time in french), or to spell c-h-a-t, or of learning easy things. Such a thrill can belong to grown-ups, but only if one has no qualms to going back and starting again in the first grade.

So what now? Well next week, having purposefully made myself stupid again, I will go back to Uni-Bastion on the correct day (i think) when I return to 1st grade with a bunch of other similarly lost adult children, for my first language class in 15 years. Will we get a nap?