Out of my depthAs a schoolkid, I signed up for a public speaking contest purely as a ruse to meet girls. It haunts me still: in front of 300 people, I started to speak, dried up, stood there for what felt like half an hour staring at the floor and then slowly walked back to my seat. Oh, and the girl I liked laughed.
Have you ever been utterly, completely, devastatingly out of your depth?
(
chthonic, Thu 14 Oct 2004, 15:07)
« Go Back
"you suffocate people..?"Ok, to start with - i'm not very good at languages. Never have been, never will be. This all came to a point in my year nine French speaking exam. I am particularly poor at French, so i was happily bluffing my way through this exam, until my teacher asked me "how do you help around the house?" Glancing down at my snazzy yellow card, i spotted a picture of a vaccuum cleaner. ah ha, i pre-emptively thought. i sat and thought for a while, before the word for vaccuum cleaner came to me in flash of glorious, romantic French. "Je passe le asphixiator!" i announced, to be met by a grim silence. i was confused at this point, surely this was my moment of glory? "No," said the teacher, "that means you suffocate people around the house. Get out." The word for vaccuum cleaner turns out to be aspirateur (or something), not... asphixiator - I think she thought i was taking the piss. I can't really blame her. I'd been learning French for eight years at that point.
(, Tue 19 Oct 2004, 22:31, Reply)
« Go Back