I'm sure my vocabulary and diction could have used some work, but by the time I began first grade, I was pretty pleased with how well I had picked up the English language. Emboldened by that early achievement, I was unpleasantly surprised 12 years later to find that I hadn't succeeded in learning a second or third - worse, I'd soured on the idea of ever studying another.
Spanish and French were ruled out based on bad past experiences. Our Spanish teacher in grade school sported a number of worrisome affectations, from wearing a mullet and fanny pack - which were briefly granted latterday fashionability by hipsters - to buying his clothes at estate sales - which, thankfully, has not.
These are my dead man pants,"" he explained, gesturing towards his ancient trousers and then reaching up to his earlobes to adjust the huge, stainless steel earrings cast in the shape of his initials.
French, likewise, fell from the standings when I returned from Nice with a violent stomach flu and a vivid Mediterranean sunburn as dark as a bruised peach.
My German classes in high school were typically about 85 percent male, a majority of that group splitting their free time between our school's ROTC program and German industrial heavy metal. I was forced to abstain from both of these pursuits, having earlier learned that the requisite buzz cut doesn't flatter the shape of my head. After studying the language for four years, all I could remember were the exploits of Thomas, Claudia, Andrea and Uncle Stefan, the romantic quadrangle that fell in and out of love over the course of our series of instructional videos.
Uncle Stefan was clearly a Scheisskopf, as they say, but his cruel hectoring of Thomas, a boy half his age, provided the series' best dialogue and thus he became our favorite character. Unfortunately, learning Stefan's lines gave one the language skills necessary to verbally abuse teenagers, but not much else.
Coming to college, I abandoned the idea of studying another language and decided instead to throw my chips in with the success of English as an international tongue. That changed when my brother lent me several books from a literature class, which had been translated to English from Russian.
I'd considered several different languages previously and didn't find the sales pitch for Russian all that enticing. ""The best part about learning Russian is that the alphabet is really neat!"" read an informational packet provided by the University. ""It has 33 letters, and the last letter looks like a backwards 'R,' which is really neat!""
Quietly, I agreed that the Russian alphabet did look really neat, but I'd been hurt by languages before, and I wasn't about to jump on the first one flashing a backwards ""R.""
The books, however, completely sold me. The people in them lived fascinating, eventful lives, whether they were drinking and hallucinating on commuter trains, turning themselves into witches, or chatting with Satan on a daily basis. Fiction or not, I had never felt so motivated to learn about Russian culture since first reading about Ivan the Terrible.
Like a child scanning the newspaper for stories of death and dismemberment, I've always been drawn to the morbid facets of other nations. The prospect of window-shopping in Milan never brought me to Italian, and neither sun-dappled sidewalk cafes nor ""Amelie"" encouraged me to take up French.
Give me a nation with an extreme climate and a long history of political turmoil, on the other hand, and I can't wait to book a vacation. And if there are backwards ""Rs"" involved, well, it works for Toys 'R' Us.
Send Russian literature suggestions Matt's way, at hunziker@wisc.edu.
