When I was a kid in the 80’s, my father took us for lunch in a restaurant in Paris. We were so hungry and exhausted after a long day of sightseeing and walking all over this magnificent city. As we sat down at our table, the young waitress brought us the menus that were written in French, and none of us spoke any. We all had a quick look, hoping to see pictures of familiar food that we could order, but unfortunately no pictures were available.
Disappointed, we gave her back the menus. As we were preparing to leave the restaurant, she said something in French. My father looked her straight in the eyes, smiled, and replied back to her in fluent French.
Suddenly they were having a conversation and a pleasant discussion. To our surprise, my dad was speaking to this young woman like a native French speaker.
Not believing what was happening in front of us, my mother, sister and I were all dumbfounded. We were looking at each other with open eyes and mouths, totally astonished that my father was speaking French. However, based on this ongoing discussion, we were ready to eat the best dishes offered by this restaurant.
During his conversation with her, he stopped for a moment , looked at us and said “Let me order for you guys”. We were so hungry at the time that we said to him “Please order everything they have on the menu”.
As the young waitress left with our order, we started asking him how he learned French, and for how long, and how come we never knew that about it!
Before we finished our interrogation, the waitress came back with two small plates, one had apple crumble dessert and the other was vanilla ice cream.
Dad had a big smile on his face and said “Don’t embarrass me. Just eat this for now and I’ll take you to McDonald’s after we are done here”.
Obviously (John Claude) needs to work on his French
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