Tiny Confession

In 2004 I lied to a couple of friends. There. I've never worried about it or even remembered it except from time to time, and I'm sure they've long since forgotten and certainly don't care, but there's also a lesson to be learned here.

We were hiking in the Yellow Mountains in China when we came to a rest stop in the form of a small landing at the base of one cliff and on the edge of another. I think we were waiting for someone to catch up to us, but in any case four of us stopped on the landing. We were soon joined by three foreigners ─ one female and two males ─ one of whom was very tall and, according to my friends, very good-looking. To be honest, I didn't see it, but I've always had different taste in men.

My friends took up whispering among themselves about how fine this guy looked and so on and so forth and sooner or later one of them dared the other (doesn't this show how young we were?) to talk to him. Before anyone could act on the dare, however, we overheard them speaking and immediately realized they were French, or at least of a French-speaking nation. My friends turned in unison and stared at me.

Let me paint you a little self portrait. I started studying French at the age of 13 and continued through university until they no longer offered courses in the study of the language itself. At the time, I had studied French for five years and traveled to that beautiful country twice. My friends knew I spoke French because I had used it on occasion before to pretend that none of us spoke English ─ a very useful escape in some places in China.

So as the obvious bridge between this English speaking dare and its French speaking goal, the girls asked me to talk to him. This is where I should have told them something I knew all along. You see, I have yet to meet someone who speaks French who does not also speak English.

Our conversation lasted about ten minutes during which I found that two of them were a couple (the tall one was single), the tall one was roughly the same age as my friends ─ mid twenties, they were all from Paris, they spoke fluent English, and they had been traveling in China for fun for about two weeks. The girl was a journalist and I don't remember what the boys were but they were just here on vacation. I answered their questions about us being from America and living here for five months to teach English in the capital city of the province.

From time to time throughout the conversation I would throw my friends a scrap or two, but as they spent the entire time standing six feet away and making rather silly fools of themselves, I was certainly not inclined to help them out much. Ladies. You were standing six feet away. He could hear everything you said. Even if he hadn't understood a single word, he'd still have known you were batting your eyelashes at him.

Whoever it was we had been waiting for arrived and onward we hiked. My friends drilled me for the conversation details and the most essential question of all: Did I tell him they thought he was hot?

I lied to my friends. I said he said thank you but he was in a relationship.