Friday Night Lights

For four months I carried 300 French flash cards around with me - whenever a free second was gained I would line up 5 or 6 cards and rattle off the answers. By the end of the second month, I had them memorized.

So I added more to the pile. My flash card stack turned into stacks - four seperate blocks of French vocab and grammar syntax that each weighed as much as a brick. I began bookmarking web pages that were study guides for French exams. I took the online assessments and after a few weeks, I began to ace them. I bought a French language CLEP practice exam book and started passing those.

As the weeks dwindled away and the "it is weeks away" changed to "it is days away" and then finally "it is hours away" I began to get nervous. People told me that I was over prepared for it; that I would pass it with no problem. The day before the exam, I added another 15 words and 10 grammar rules. Less than six hours away, I still added words and rules.

On Friday, I took the French CLEP exam: a passing grade of 62 out of 80 would exempt me from foreign language classes and would put me in position to graduate at the end of this summer. I missed by less than 5 points. Less than 20 of the words that I studied showed up on the exam, and the questions focused more on listening comprehension more than reading which was the exact opposite of what I was told in every study guide.

I sat in my car for a while in the parking garage next to the test facility. I wanted to scream, find an alley way and drink from a paper bag for the night, wake up the next day and then go home. I didn't want to see anyone or face anyone with my failure - a miserable one which prolongs my graduation for up to a year. I wanted to die where I was, throw the towel into the ring and start quitting everything.

Elsewhere in the world, my friend V was lying in a dentist's chair having her teeth ripped out of her head. Chelsea's mom was getting syringes stuck in her lower back to relieve the pains of arthiritis. Both of them were alone during their procedures and were more than likely suffering by themselves.

I thought about this, the three of us, each dealing with new levels of pain and isolation and I made a deal with myself: I would give myself one hour - and just one hour - to feel self-pity, after that, I would pick myself up and re-plan. That's what I did. I got out of my car and took a photo of the sun:

Later I called Chelsea's mom and listened to her tale. She is a brave woman who gets braver and stonger everyday, I told her that there are people in this world who are far worse off than her and me and nearly all of them will get up tomorrow morning and that is what we both need to do.

I woke up today - although I slept in later than usual.