Vignette From My Parents' Visit

Except for the Shakespeare-related strange conversation from Christmas, I rarely post the odd conversations I have with my mother, because, as I mentioned in the thread linked above, there’s something about her tone that I can’t get right on the page.

(This, of course, being the mother who used to refer to her Maltese terrier Polly as her “child substitute.” When we pointed out that she does, in fact, already have three children, she’d respond, “Yes, but Polly is the child I wanted.” I think I could make a pretty good case to DOCS on that conversation alone—if I didn’t tell them that Polly later accidentally drowned while my brother and I were taking the dogs for a walk.)

In this instance, we were talking about the fact that my sister, who believes that education is a lifelong process, is now taking French classes. She now tends to speak in French on the phone: Nick nearly hung up on her the other day, because he had no idea who she was.

My mother’s English-schoolgirl French, though, is a little rusty:

MY MOTHER: So, I want to respond in French. And I said to your father, “What would I use? Tu?” And he said, “No, vous. Tu is the familiar form.” So I said, “Well, she is our daughter. How familiar do we need to get?”