The "French Connection" Story

It was an ordinary day. I was in French class at MTHS and we were reading letters sent to us by our exchange student. My French name is Raoul and my French pen pal's name is Monique. Pretty neat french name for a girl, isn't it? I'm in my second year of French and I have never carried on a conversation in the language. I took two years of Latin and never spoke a single sentence in Latin in those two years. I chose to take the languages because my parents wanted me to go to college and you had to have two years of two languages to get into most colleges. Why? I don't know, but that's what the guidance counselors told us. They needed to keep the foreign language teachers busy, I guess. At the time I thought maybe there were lots of French people or Latin people going to college and I would have to talk to them. Hey, I was only 14 years old at the time I took Latin. Now I know better. I should have taken Spanish and Russian. Well, Monique sent me a photo and I have to meet her. Pretty hot! Remember now, I'm 17 at the time and somewhat of a nerd. I'm not sure that has ever changed except for the age part. I kept up the correspondence until I graduated and then found out she was going to visit friends on the east coast the summer after I graduated. I was going to meet her. She wrote and told me she was going with a friend to Atlantic City for a day and maybe we could meet on the beach. You bet!! I talked my friend Terry D. into going with me and everything was set. On the big day we left Lancaster early and got to Atlantic City by 10:00 AM. Found our meeting place and waited on the beach for the girls. "Here they come," I said to Terry when these two girls headed our way. They just looked French! Sure enough they were Monique and her friend Sylvie. Not quite what I had expected, but then again, we probably weren't what they had expected. I was 6 feet tall and weighed 150 pounds. Skinny as a rail and wore black glasses an had a really short haircut. Terry wasn't much different except he weighed about 100 pounds more then me and talked with a lisp. Well, we had fun on the beach that day, I think! They talked mostly in French to each other and laughed a lot when they looked at us. I recognized a few words, but how I wish I had known how to speak conversational French. We parted late afternoon after exchanging phone numbers, but I knew we would never hear from them again. And that was OK. I could never have understood what the girl was talking about most of the time anyway. Kind of like it is today with my wife, but that's because I'm getting older and can't hear very well. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.