I was extremely excited by this playful turn of events. Even though the e-mail was simple and succinct due to her lack of English skills, my imagination started to run wild. Only I could interpret “How was your trip? I hope you had good time” into the underpinnings of some of kind of epic romance with international intrigue.
Our correspondence went back and forth about every other day. We would send a couple of pictures with each message along with the story behind the picture in order to get to know each other a little bit better. It was a great system and things got flirtier and flirtier as time progressed. Her initial e-mails concluded with Yours, Cat but that evolved to Kisses, Cat and at the height of our relationship, A Thousand Kisses, Cat. You can’t make this stuff up.
Everything was going great until we hit our first snag. She wanted me to learn French so she started writing to me exclusively in French, thus forcing me to learn their crazy language. I said I would but the closest I got was checking out a few French dictionaries at the library. My first idea to avoid this task was to enlist the help of one of my French speaking real estate professors, who thought the whole situation very amusing. That worked for awhile, but I knew the solution was only temporary.
Just when I thought the letters we’re going to have to end, I discovered a web site that does free instant translating for any language. Eureka! My problems were solved. I just wrote what I wanted to say in English, copied and pasted it into this site, and Voila! I was instantly a cunning linguist in the most romantic language in the world. But rather than lead this girl into thinking I was some kind of prodigy, I instead, took the translation, deleted a word here, switched a few letters there, and liberally sprinkled random apostrophes all over the place.
It was a grammatical nightmare. Any respectable Frenchmen would have been disgusted with what I did to their beautiful language. However, Catherine thought it was adorable so they can all kiss my ass.
By now you’re probably thinking, Ben, you’re on a gravy train with biscuit wheels, how did you manage to biff this one?
Well, I thought Catherine had a sense of humor well enough to understand the genius behind everyone’s favorite periodical, The Onion. She didn’t. I found an extremely poignant article that related to how we first met. The title of the report was U.S. Foreign Policy Hurting American Students’ Chances of Getting Laid Abroad. The title pretty much explains itself but there was one particular line that went along the lines of, “I was dancing with this Italian girl and I swear to God I on was on the cusp of a handjob until she heard my American accent. Then she wanted to argue why we didn’t sign the Kyoto Treaty.” I’m sorry, but that’s just great writing, I don’t care who you are.
Apparently, Catherine just didn’t get it. I even explained to her that I was just kidding about the whole article and that The Onion isn’t even a real newspaper. It’s all fake news and satire. Still, she never wrote to me again after I sent that article.
I’m glad the relationship ended the way it did though because it really had no chance of going anywhere. I really didn’t look forward to the prospect of frog blood running through the veins of my kin. The last thing I need is a bunch of unemployed socialists running around my house. I already live with one right now and it’s hard enough as it is. Sacre’ Bleu!
What was the whole point of this long-winded post? Oh yeah, socialism doesn’t work. God Bless America.
Will somebody PLEASE give this guy a job? God!
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