Black Belt Mama here, guest posting on the illustrious Adam’s Cerebral Spillage, so I guess you’d have to say this is my spillage. . .
When I was in 8th grade, I signed up for a pen pal. I had taken exactly one year of french classes and decided I wanted a non-English speaking pen pal. I was assigned to Franck.
In his first letter, he sent me a picture. I was in love. He had dark wavy hair and looked. . . exotic. He was French after all. I didn’t have a clue what he said to me in his letter and I pretty much didn’t care. I carried that picture with me everywhere and bragged that he was my new French boyfriend. He could have told me he was a pig farmer and into manure up to his armpits, but I wouldn’t have known any better or cared. I could create my own reality with someone whose language I didn’t understand. I asked my French teacher to translate for me and the letter was way more boring than I imagined it would be. Didn’t matter though. I’ve always been a creative thinker. Franck was promising his undying love to me; I was sure of it. I could read between the lines.
I sat down to respond to Franck and had a terrible time with it. As far as the French language went, I knew colors and swear words. That was about it. I tried to write a letter that told Franck how adorable I thought he was, but I’m sure I probably actually wrote that I could smell his bad breath from the states or something equally horrible. Needless to say, we didn’t write each other much after the first few letters.
I’m sure he carried around my blonde spiral-permed picture everywhere he went though. The language barrier just prevented us from ever getting to marriage. I just couldn’t commit to learning more than the swear words and I’m quite sure that French girls had much cooler hair styles than what I had back then.
MySpace, email and all the Internet goodness didn’t exist back then (I know, I’m practically a dinosaur), but it does today.
One day, I got an entertaining email from a guy across the pond who happened to like my blog. His name happens to be Adam; maybe you know him. I started reading his blog and we started emailing back and forth. As far as pen pals go, he put Franck to shame. First, you know, no language issue; and since we’re both happily married it totally takes all that awkward pressure out of the scenario entirely.
Adam and I have spent days emailing back and forth our favorite musical groups, comparing health care systems and talking beer and politics. But we mostly discuss food.
For Christmas, we exchanged packages to give each other a sampling of our own countries. I sent him lard fried potato chips (or crisps as I’ve learned you call them across the pond), pretzels, and chocolate covered pretzels from a local pretzel factory. Adam sent me traditional English fairings and some amazing dark chocolate with oranges in it.
For my birthday, Adam sent me enough chocolate to double the size of my thighs and some interesting flavored “crisps.” We just don’t have “prawn” flavored chips over here. For his birthday, I’m planning on returning the ass-inducing favor by sending him a package full of cakes. Something tells me that Adam and I won’t be carrying around pictures of each other to brag to our friends.
Then again, we may have an ass-growing competition going on here. I’m a very competitive person and I’m determined to win.