Mais, je ne parle pas francais!

Okay, so now it's 4 o'clock in the morning--4:38 by my alarm clock--and I'm still not sleeping. But as I was lying there I remembered a dream I had earlier tonight, and I figured if I didn't get up and blog it now I'd never remember it in the morning.

In my dream I was on the run, trying to hide from someone or something, and to throw people off my track I started speaking French to everyone. And I really was speaking French. There was one scene where I was in a deli ordering a sandwich, and I did the whole thing in French, and I remember actually translating from English to French in my head before speaking. (and when people asked me to speak in English, I did it with this really bad accent. In my head I was actually thinking at the time, "That's a really bad accent. I'm totally going to get found out."

Now, I took two years of high school French, and in real life I can probably create about fifteen sentences, but that's it. But is it possible that all the French I knew at one time but now can't recall is locked in my head somewhere, and I actually accessed it in my dream?? Darnit, why can't I do that when I'm awake?!

I remember reading an article a long time ago about a girl who was in some sort of accident, I think, or at least in a coma from something or other, and when she woke up she spoke Korean fluently. Her grandmother was Korean, and she'd grown up hearing the language spoken by family, but never really learned it herself. And then suddenly she could. Can you imagine? Can you imagine waking up one day and knowing something you'd never known before? Being able to speak a different language, or paint like Monet, or sing like an angel, or pitch like Randy Johnson? And then realizing that the ability to do this new thing has always been there, and you just couldn't get to it? It makes me wonder what else is stuck up there in my noggin, just waiting to be tapped into.

Bon soir, mes amies, bon soir...