If you need a little dose of deprecation:

Learn a foreign language!

There is no better way to feel ignorant than to say "I eat yesterday chicken" when what you meant to say was "Yesterday I ate chicken." Unless you say, "Wow - handsome!" when you'd intended to comment on how delicious the food was that your friends' Mom made for you.

And while you're at it, try feeling confused: Did he just say "Good job" or "I'm cold"? And um....did he tell me to go under the bridge and go left or go left over bridge or go left at the bridge or did he say to go right and nothing about a bridge??

Forgetful too: "How do I say 'then,' again? Oh, and what about 'I'm coming back!'?" And for some reason the word for "always" will simply NEVER stay in your head!

Inadequate and incompetent? Check! "I really just have NO IDEA what you are trying to say to me...!!"

And usually "frightened" is not the right word. Try "tengo miedo" - you just "have fear." It's like a disease, every time you open your mouth to speak a different language, instead of words there's only fear.

Finally, you'll probably feel a little like Lucy from the I Love Lucy show - she knows what she's thinking but to everyone else, she always just looks a little (or a lot) silly.

This is a small and incomplete list of all the ways that attempting to learn a foreign language can be damaging to your self esteem.

I suggest you try it.

February 7th, 6 years ago

I still remember everything about that day as if it was yesterday - not six years ago. Holding down the fort while the fam was away. The big storm had knocked out our electricity so they'd headed off to Lebanon to stay with Av and Apryl. Jo and I had sat around in the cold all day; she was doing what she did those days and I was working on a portrait for an ACE competition by candle light.

Earlier, over dinner cooked on our gas oven, we'd discovered the joys of "burning" Styrofoam cups. On mine I'd written the feelings I had for a Certain Person... We spent a lot of time during our senior year together. He wanted me but I just told Him I wasn't interested. But I was. The last time I saw Him we had a big fight, didn't say goodbye, and He never told me He was leaving. So I wrote out my frustration, hurt, confusion, and that lingering feeling that could have been love on a Styrofoam cup. Then watched in sadness and interest as all the words melted over that maroon candle. Then the call came. Jo answered and I knew by her face what Mom was saying. I even knew who it was. She didn't have to say it, but somehow the look of shock and horror in her face when she put down the phone and then put her arms around me couldn't prepare me for the words that came crashing through my mind into my heart: "It's Jesse".

Jesse, the one who had been there for me, and Him, through the whole thing. Jesse, the one who used to make me smile when nothing else would. Jesse, the one who I thought would always be there, was gone. His whole family had been killed when a semi careened into the back of their van as they sat in traffic near their home.

I remember crying for hours with my head in her lap as she stroked my hair and handed me an endless string of tissues. I remember her reading Psalms to me as I fell into a fitful sleep. I remember thinking I'd never sleep, then waking up and wishing I could just be asleep again. I remember spending hours over the next few days sitting and trying to fathom what had happened. I remember standing in church three days later bawling my eyes out. I remember my Mom putting her arm around me and not saying anything. I remember standing in little groups with my friends - no one had anything to say. I remember wishing that somehow in all this pain He would come back and help me through it - the way the three of us had done everything else together that year. I remember the rain that fell all day Tuesday - mimicking the tears that would not stop running down my face. I remember countless nights dreaming about him being alive again - half the time I thought it was real and cried when I woke up, the other half of the time I knew it wasn't real and woke up crying. I remember the last dream about him - he'd died. I remember wondering when I was going to move on - when life would go back to normal.

And now I know the answer to that question: NEVER.

That string of events was the beginning of a new normal. A normal that included more pain than I'd ever experienced before. A normal that never stopped changing.

I don't miss him anymore. I don't think about him often. But I can't forget. Losing him, losing our friendship, was the beginning of my metamorphoses from a lost teenager to an adult finding her way. There were no answers, and that is when I realized that life goes on without answers. There was so much pain that wouldn't go away, which is how I realized that in order to go on with all that pain I would have to embrace it and let it change me. There was no way to go back, and then I realized that there never would be. Ever little thing, ever big thing, combines to make me who I am. I am left wondering, who would I be today without him? Who would he be today?