College students studied French in the
50’s and 60’s because all the great
writers sat on the South Bank of the
Seine, drank a lot of red wine and
appeared so Bohemian and besides
all that, French sounded so romantic
and really romantic movies around
that time always seemed to have French
sounding actors in them. The actors’
berets were so handsome and the act-
resses’ lips were so glossy and pouty
— like Leslie Caron’s and Brigitte Bar-
dot’s not to mention Brigitte Bardot’s
beautiful and bountiful breasts. French
words just hung in the air forever like
light, white cumulus clouds floating
across the blue sky on a warm summer
day over the Eifel Tower. Then years
later those students wondered why they
had studied French when Spanish would
have been so much more practical. Real-
ly, how many berets do you see these
days and how many glossy, pouty lips
do you see except those of aging Cougars
with Botox lips, bulging, sagging, silicon
breasts and little boy hips pushing carts
through high-end grocery stores in Phoe-
nix, Arizona as they listen to Spanish be-
ing spoken by just about everyone a-
round them frantically wondering if
guapo or “gropo” is the word for hand-
some as they eye the firm behind of the
young, Hispanic guy pushing the grocery
cart to the BMW?
bobdahl
Musings by Bob/ Blogging so I don't drive e-mail friends crazy
bobdahl 
Je parle français, but not for all reasons cited. Once on a student trip Chris led, the bus had an accident in Paris and the French teacher in the group couldn’t speak for being panicked at the thought! Mme. K to the rescue, parlaying with gendarmes and others. In 2001 I recalled enough iin Montreal to have to ask locals to slow down: they thought I was from France. Mlle. Wunderlich at TJC taught me well! The head of dept. at Hope: not so much, so I changed my major to English. Learn Spanish traveling–funny poem, this. I don’t get your feed automatically–is that something you control at your site, or do I tinker? So out of touch in 2015!! ~Vicki