Conversational French

We recently hosted some friends who are French.  The youngest child, Romeo, an adorable three year old with floppy brown hair and big eyes, speaks no English.

After a few drinks, I, like most people, come to believe that I am smarter, funnier and better looking than I actually am.  Ahh, the magic of alcohol.  Too bad it doesn't make my French any better.  The conversation between Romeo and I is recounted below, translated into English for those of you who either don't speak French or who aren't drunk right now.

"Sir," Romeo asks, his hair flopping down over his left eye.  "May I play with this yellow car?"  He calls me 'monsieur'. He calls Michael 'boy' and Caroline is 'girl'. I think it's very cute.
"Yes, of course," I reply in flawless French.  I am now his best friend, having both given him permission to play with the yellow car and demonstrated that I speak his language.  He is, poor child, completely unaware that I have exhausted the entire linguistic reserve of two years of high school French.  I speak French in the way that a parrot speaks English - I repeat it, it sounds about right, and the words are sometimes marginally appropriate to the situation, but as often as not, I have no idea what I'm saying.

Some time later I am in the kitchen preparing dinner for the children, believing that I am a better cook than I actually am, when Romeo toddles down the hallway with both the yellow and the red cars in hand.  The red and yellow cars require that you shake them vigorously and let them loose on the floor. While ridiculous to watch, if performed properly, this shaking will produce revving engine and screeching tire noises that are most satisfactory, especially to a small child.

"Monsieur, how does this car go?"  His question is a bit of a challenge for me, but after a half a beat, I parse out the words for 'car' and 'go' and deduce his meaning.

"Relieve-her you," I reply.  The French words for relief and shake are similar enough to confuse me.  He stares at me blankly, but I hardly notice; I'm too busy trying to recall more French.  "You relieve her and then put him under the stairs."

His bewilderment deepens.  "I don't understand," he replies.  It must be so difficult to be so young.

"Listen me," I command.  I shake the yellow car and place it on the carpet.  It races away, its engine roaring, and he shrieks with unbridled delight.  He fetches the car and brings it back to me, holding it aloft so that I may shake it again.  "No, you," I tell him.  "Relieve!" I instruct emphatically, demonstrating with my hand.  I have to get back to my boiling pasta, now frothing over, the starchy water hissing and popping evilly on the hot burner.

He shakes the car a few times and lets it go, but it only moves a few inches.  He is crestfallen.  "Monsieur, encore, s'il vous plaît?"  he requests, a quiver in his voice.  I shake the car and send it tearing down the hall, and he is happy once more.

There follows here a lengthy passage in his three-year-old French that is far better than mine and which I cannot possibly comprehend.  It sounds like a question and it ends with please, so I assume he wants me to do the car thing again.  I shake the car and let it go but his eyes well with tiny Gallic tears.  Apparently I have misinterpreted his intentions. "No, no don't rain!" I implore, but he is howling and crying for his mère.  "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" his mother asks him, shepherding him into the front room as I return to my cooking.

A few minutes later, he's back, holding aloft two of Michael's small toy dinosaurs.  "Monsieur, are these elephants?"  I of course have no idea what he's asking so I smile and nod politely, the way you do when you've had a bit to drink and your dinner's beginning to weld itself to the stove top.  "They don't look like elephants," he continues.  "Elephants are grey and they have looong trunks.  They are not elephants, I think.  Have you ever seen an elephant?"

I am completely out of my depth.  I think he's asking what kind of dinosaurs they are, but of course I don't know, and I admit as much.  He seems puzzled that I am uncertain as to whether I've ever seen an elephant, but he lets it pass.  "What are you cooking?"

"Stegosaurus, maybe?" I think he's still asking about the dinosaurs.  He looks horrified and runs away. 

He eats very little at dinner.  When his mother presses him to finish his pasta, he protests violently in French and runs away.  He does this a lot, it seems.  I ask if everything is all right, but his mother shakes her head.  "He has the, ah, the ideas crazy," she replies carefully in English.  "He say the pasta is a dinosaur."

I can't imagine where he got that idea.