Somewhere In My Memory

April 12, 2015

French class was always a fun time for me. The vast majority of classmates I attended French class with hated the subject. I get the distinct feeling that everytime my teacher would wheel in her little black cart with the green Dimoitou puppet, some kids groaned. I loved it though, and I would often get good grades in the subject.

I remember one year, we were doing a unit study on foods. We had to learn what several of the French words were for fruits and vegetables at the time. Some of them were really easy. Orange was orange. Banana was banane. Easy-peasy, right?

Not all of them were all that easy though. When it came down to the french word for pineapple, most of the class was stumped. When the teacher asked us what the French word for pineapple was, nobody knew.

But, I knew. I knew it very well. I shot up my hand and proudly declared that it was "un ananas"!

And, the teacher was impressed. Very impressed.

She flashed other fruits to me, and I named them all. Cherry=cerise. Grape=raisin. Pomme=apple. Pomme de Terre=Potato.

We then had to do a colouring page afterwards, and at this time, another teacher had come into the classroom. I don't think I was supposed to hear the conversation that the two teachers were having, but I distinctly remember hearing my French teacher talking about how I had a really good photographic memory.

I wondered to myself...what did that mean? I didn't understand the concept of that statement. I certainly didn't take Polaroid pictures with my mind.

As I grew older, though, I began to understand what she meant.

Part of the reason why I knew what the French word for pineapple was? TVOntario.

I remember watching TVO non-stop, and one of the programs was some silly little French show where the star was a talking pineapple. I didn't understand what the heck the people were saying, as my mother tongue was English, but the pineapple's name stuck out in my mind.

The pineapple was named "Ananas".

It seems silly, right? How watching a show that I had no hope of understanding as a five year old helped me enrich my vocabulary in another language. But, maybe my teacher had a point. If I hadn't have watched the show, would I have remembered the term? Probably not.

I was also a huge fan of Kool-Aid as a kid, and remember helping my mom mix it up many times. I would often read the label of the package while I poured the water into the pitcher, just to see how many cups of water I had to pour in. Keep in mind that I'm Canadian, so all our packaging was written in both English and French. That's probably how I learned the French words of the other fruits.

Apparently, the French language wasn't the only thing I remembered from way back when.

Does anyone remember those Laurentian pencil crayons? The 24 packs of coloured pencils with each one individually numbered. Well, if you told me a number, I could tell you the corresponding colour. In anyone's interested, give it a try! Ask me a number, I'll tell you the colour!

People have told me that I have a diabolical memory, and I think that my long-term memory is really good.

My short-term memory is not the best. In fact, I'd say that it completely sucks.

Try as I might, I always seem to misplace the remote-control, my wallet, my schedule...in one day, I misplaced all three.

I would try to take a course in improving my short-term memory...but I keep forgetting.

What's the point of this little note? Well, in my last note, I talked about my biggest weaknesses, and I figure that I should lighten the mood by talking about my strengths.

A good memory just happens to be one of my strengths.

I'm sure that I will come up with more strengths...if I remember to do so.