Saturday, April 4, 2009

Purge

I reorganized and moved bookshelves today.
I found that the time had come to let go and say good bye to my old French text books.
I never could do it before now.
My study of French was always a bit spiteful. I feared I'd never reach the goal and so I worked on to spite those creeping fears that came to taunt me whenever I laid the goal aside too long.
It's been six years since I left school. I've forgotten much of what I worked so hard to learn. In the past when I've looked over my books I've felt compelled to keep them as a reminder, written proof of what I knew.
Today I looked at those books and I could picture myself telling my grand children someday "No, I can't speak much french anymore, but just look at this old exercise book! See what I did there? Observe the rows and rows of verbs perfectly conjugated in tense upon tense! Your old granny really knew her francais I tell you what."
So, today for the sake of my grand children, I gave up my old books.
I kept 3 dictionaries, "501 French Verbs" and a guide to French idioms that was quite handy in that french writing class I took way back when. Just enough so I'll be ready to climb back on that old french horse when he canters my way again.

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