I was sulking about just this thing a bit this morning, when I was struggling to finish my Spanish homework. I often wish that I had learned a second language when I was a child. I know that my grandparents always regretted that I couldn't speak Cantonese with them, and wished I lived closer so that they could teach me. Spanish, French, Italian, German...I don't think it would have mattered what language I learned, because simply having that experience of thinking in multiple languages and switching back and forth between them sure would have made it a lot easier to pick up other tongues later in life.
Instead, today I can remember the details of insipid, stupid stories I read in elementary school but the details of the lives of artists I studied at SJSU and wrote endless papers about have gone completely fuzzy. Dopey song lyrics can be recalled with relative ease, but Spanish vocabulary escapes me a day or two after studying it.
So annoying. So frustrating!
It makes me feel old.
