3/52 - Speaking German

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school

It's a wonder I can think at all

--Paul Simon

Well, it's not entirely all crap.

And to be honest, some of it was not the fault of the subject matter or the teachers but a failure on the receiving end.

I was on a pretty aggressive math track in high school and college.

I had calculus in high school and then ⅔ of a math/computer science degree in college, which lasted until the CS degree required me to program a C++ compiler, whatever that was. At this point, I [somewhat] gracefully withdrew from the course. In my defense, remember that this was during the punched card era of computer science. At this time, all the programming was done on punch cards that needed to be submitted to an IBM mainframe for batch processing. This batch processing occurred about every two hours, which meant that each iteration of the program had at least a two-hour lapse between errors. If you forgot a comma or a space or spelled something wrong on three or four consecutive iterations of your program, pretty soon you were down seven or eight hours on a program that was due the next day and looking at an all-nighter waiting at the computer center. 

To venture into the computer center at Jones Hall at William and Mary required a descent into the basement with the risk that it might be hours before you emerged. Keep in mind that this was before email, the internet, social media, and cell phones, so if you vanished, there was little likelihood that you would be discovered. Some scary CS people lived full-time in the basement, never surfacing for air, never seeing the light of day and surviving on nothing but Apple Jacks and PopTarts from the vending machine. But on the plus side, they probably all eventually became rich. During the first few CS classes, when we tackled things like writing a Fortran program to do bowling scores, this two-hour per batch waiting time was survivable. But once we got into writing a compiler… Nope, it's not possible.

This was a shame because, in shifting away from CS, I stopped taking math courses and began forgetting all the math I once knew. I took classes like Linear Algebra, Multivariate Calculus, and Differential Equations. I got As in them. One would expect that SOME vestiges of these courses would remain in my brain, even though it has been filled up with necessary information, like 45 seasons of Survivor in the years since. Not only would I not know how to solve problems in any of these disciplines, but I don't even know what the discipline was all about. 

Not so with everything from high school. We were fortunate to go to Europe this fall, spending a few weeks in Switzerland and Germany. And while I was not conversant, relics of my three years of High School German popped up here and there with increasing frequency. This was surprising. I had no idea this information was floating around back there, hidden behind Season 40 (“Winners at War”) of Survivor, only needing a few nudges to reemerge.The only things I consciously remembered from my high school German were these:

1 -- From Frau Owens, “Schade Manchini, du hast eine Null.” Frau Owens would enter the classroom in a cloud of 4711 perfume (sieben und vierzig elf), immediately proclaim that the problem with American students was a lack of frische Luft, and whip open all of the windows even though it was 29 degrees outside. Looking back on it, though, she probably saved us all from a fatal sieben und vierzig elf asphyxiation. 

2 -- From Frau Schwab, "Hast du Scheiße in deinen Ohren, Manchini?" This was a universally applicable phrase expressing frustration about a lack of attention, usable in work and child-rearing situations. I am thankful to Frau Schwab for contributing it to my vocabulary arsenal.

3 -- From Harcourt, Brace, and World language labs [and eventually, the mysterious “Jovanovich”) my only remaining snippet of the dialogues that shaped each lesson:

• Eager male soccer-playing suitor: “Trinkst du eine Limonade mit mir? Da drüben ist ein Stand.”

• Reluctant female object of his attention: “Nein. Du verlierst das Spiel immer.”

• Crestfallen male suitor: “Meinst du dass, oder sagst du dass, nur so?”

Translated,

• “Do you want to drink lemonade with me? There's a stand over there.”

• “No, you always lose the game.”

• “Do you mean that, or are you just saying that?” (Sigh.)

A note on the cover image for this post. A favorite moment in a trip to Germany 45 years ago was my insistence after a few beverages at the Hofbrauhaus that “Einbahnstrasse” meant “the road to the train station,” (where our hotel was located), which led to about an hour of random sign-following wandering. So, given my meager collection of remembered German words, one would think that this past knowledge had been lost to the ages, not unlike my lost mathematical acumen.

Not so fast, Sherlock. As the days in Switzerland and Germany passed, many German words returned to me. Surprising to such an extent that I started fooling around with Duolingo when we got back to the US. So Fraus Owen and Schwab must have somehow done something with my teenage brain. I have learned many useful phrases in my 70 CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF DUOLINGO, such as “Der Bär und die Maus brauchen eine Wohnung,” which means “The bear and the mouse need an apartment.” It’s a shame this lesson came AFTER our trip to Europe, because as my friend Lynn pointed out, “Wish I had known this -- on our cruise I ran into a bear and a mouse at the train station in Köln and I couldn’t help them.”

All of this has resulted in the addition of another resolution to my existing two resolutions:

• Resolution #1 - Learn how to bake a variety of cake rolls. 

• Resolution #2 - Just freaking write SOMETHING.

• Resolution #3 - Keep my Duolingo German consecutive-day streak alive until the next time we return to Germany.

Current status of number 3? -- 75 consecutive days

I wonder if my other resolutions can be gamified.

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This is part of a series of posts designed to keep me busy and off the street, inspired by Ann Patchett’s book of essays. Hopefully some of these musings (well, likely not this one) will contribute to a successor to Immigrant Secrets (https://www.amazon.com/Immigrant-Secrets-Search-My-Grandparents/dp/B0B45GTTPP).

You can get the posts directly HERE (https://www.searchformygrandparents.com/subscribe) or use the subscribe button on this page (https://authory.com/johnmancini).