French. I loved French class, because I got it. It was the only subject in school that really rang my chimes, and so while most of my classmates tolerated Minnie Hopstein and her "Bonjour, la classe," I looked forward to French class because it was the one place I could excel.

Ironically, in seventh grade I had a class in Linguistics, which I failed miserably - I chalk it up to a teacher who was boring and uninspired, material that was beyond the grasp of the average 7th-grader, and a lack of mental discipline and maturity on my part - because I ended up spending a career as a linguist.

I should have had the good sense to listen to the lessons of the experience in grade school. My first year in college, I tried Chemistry with an eye towards becoming a physician. Big mistake - while I loved the hard sciences, they require math. Lots of math. Which for me is not a Good Thing. I flunked out that year, but count the year as a win because I discovered my spiritual walk.

Next year, at another school, I tried business - accounting and economics. Again, not a Good Thing. More math. What was I thinking? At least I had the good sense to take French the next year, and at that point the light went on. When I switched my major to French, I graduated Magna Cum, ended up spending a career as a lingust, learned five languages more or less fluently and another dozen or so well enough to get thrown in jail.

In Have Space Suit, Will Travel, Heinlein has Kip Russell say, "Algebra and plane geometry were all the math our school offered; I went ahead on my own with advanced algebra and solid geometry and trigonometry and might have stopped so far as College Boards were concerned--but math is worse than peanuts. Analytical geometry seems pure Greek until you see what they're driving at--then, if you know algebra, it bursts on you and you race through the rest of the book. Glorious!"

While I don't Grok math, I do understand the sentiment - for me, languages are worse than peanuts - and the more I learn, the more I understand about how languages work. I can't quench the desire to learn a new one. Currently on the plate: Hebrew. After a career spent working hands-on with the Scriptures, I thought it was time I learned how to read the Old Testament in the original, even if only with a trot at the ready.

Merci, Minnie.