It dawned on me recently that I’ve been writing this column going on a dozen years and I’ve never once during that span acknowledged my French Canadian heritage nor given a shout-out to all the hard-working Quebec Realtors. Bonjour, mes amis!

Sadly, despite repeated traditional attempts at learning the language, my high school French just never took. Upon more honest recollection, that could have been because I didn’t really pay much attention.

I do remember that one morning in class we were each asked to announce what we had for breakfast that day, in French. I came up with what I thought was a brilliant, witty answer: “le Tang”. I must have conjugated 1,000 verbs as penance that evening in detention. I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get le strap.

If there’s one thing that has managed to stick with me after all the years that have passed since I was in school, it was that damned conjugating thing. Day after day, class after class, a monotone group of children repeating that “I are”, “We are”, “You are”, “She is”, “They may be”, “I’m a Pepper”, “You’re a Pepper” in French, over and over and over –while trying to determine whether a spoon or a tractor was masculine or feminine. Like I was going to ask either of those to the junior prom!

On a side note, wouldn’t it be cool if there really was such a thing as literal French immersion? You could just dive down into a big tubful of the language, and then climb out, towel down and you’d be chatting away like Gerard Depardieu accepting a trophy at the French Academy Awardstrés bien!    

What makes this lack of proficiency in the French language even more embarrassing is that my heritage is French Canadian, going back at least as far as my Mom and Dad. They are both amazingly fluent. Of course they used that to our disadvantage as kids, conversing right out in the open, knowing full well that my sisters and I were entirely unable to understand a word of what they were saying. Even dogs can kind-of sense when people are saying things like “go for a walk” or “food”. How was I supposed to know that “cherchez les fenetres” meant we were going cucumber picking, on a rattan toboggan? At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it meant.

Stereotypical as it may be (but like most young males growing up) the only French words that stuck were the ones I can’t repeat in this column. That presumes that every word I picked up in the schoolyard really did mean what the older kids assured us they did. Come to think of it though, I never did get a reaction when I called someone a “Mercredi beaucoup”.

I really do regret that I didn’t pay more attention and learn a practical second language, especially one that just happens to be one of our official Canadian languages.

That way, the next time I get a new DVD recorder with only the French language instructions, I could actually install it properly and not have my garage door open every time I press play.

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