"Poppie's French Connection"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

Of all the Romance languages, the most beautiful, in my humble opinion, is Pig Latin.

Take this simple phrase: “Hiya, toots!” Translated into Pig Latin, it becomes: “Iya-hay, oots-tay!”

Eloquent, isn’t it?

The second most beautiful Romance language is French, in which I am not, unfortunately, conversant. But I am learning it with a certain je ne sais quoi (translation: “Hiya, toots!”) with the help of my 3-year-old granddaughter, Chloe.

Chloe is learning French with the help of her daddy, Guillaume, who is from France, a magnificent (magnifique) country that I visited five years ago with my wife (ma femme), Sue (Sue), and some other members of our family (la famille) for the wedding of Guillaume and our younger daughter (fille), Lauren (ditto).

Now their daughter, Chloe, is teaching me (moi) French.

I want to speak it better than I do Spanish, which I took for eight years in high school and college and still can’t hold a decent conversation. I know only two phrases: “Cerveza fria, por favor” (“Cold beer, please”) and the natural follow-up question, “Donde esta el bano?” (“Where is the bathroom?”)

That is why I am sure Chloe will be muy bien (sorry, I mean tres bon) in teaching me French.

According to Lauren, when Chloe went for a doctor’s appointment recently, she said to the receptionist, “Je m’appelle Chloe,” which means “My name is Chloe.”

“Did she just speak French?” the stunned receptionist asked.

“Yes,” Lauren replied, though she should have said, “Oui.”

The next time I saw Chloe, I said, “Je m’appelle Poppie.”

She smiled, no doubt at my pathetic pronunciation, and said, “Poppie!”

I was babysitting her and thought it was a good time for a French lesson.

“Bonjour, Chloe,” I said.

“Bonjour, Poppie,” she responded.

That was pretty much all I knew. But I was about to get a crash course. Chloe loves books and always wants me to read to her, so I was not surprised when she handed me a book starring her favorite character, Peppa Pig. The title: “Une Journee Avec Peppa” (“A Day With Peppa”).

Yes, it was in French.

If you read Chloe a book in English and stumble over a word, she will make you repeat it.

“My God (Mon Dieu),” I thought, “this is going to be terrible (terrible).”

I began to read: “Ce matin, Peppa se reveille.”

I had no idea what I just said, but it didn’t matter because Chloe didn’t correct me. I thought, however, that the word “reveille” meant Peppa was in the Army, though the drawing on the page showed that she was in her bed at home and was waking up at 7 o’clock in the morning.

It was obvious from subsequent drawings that the little pink porker was getting ready for school.

I trudged on: “Et prendre le petit-dejeuner tous ensemble, c’est encore mieux. Parole de Peppa!”

Chloe smiled and turned the page, a clear indication that my reading was d’accord (OK).

When Peppa got to school with her classmates, there was this line about the teacher: “Madame Gazelle, leur maitresse, est fantastique!”

Then Peppa went home for lunch: “C’est pizza et salade au menu!”

Afterward, she went to the park with her friends: “L’apres-midi, Peppa retrouve ses amis au parc.”

At dinner, Peppa’s father, Daddy Pig (Papa Pig), made his famous soup (fameuse soupe), after which Peppa had to brush her teeth (“apres avoir mange, il faut toujours se laver dents”) and go to bed (“bonne nuit!”).

Through the entire reading, Chloe didn’t stop me once, so I felt confident enough to add, “The end,” which I didn’t know in French (la fin).

But that was all right because Chloe paid me the ultimate compliment: “Merci, Poppie!”

I had passed my first French (francais) test. One of these days, with Chloe’s help, I will speak it fluently.

Then, of course, I will teach her Pig Latin.

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima

"Nice Work If You Can Get It"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

Whenever I attempt to do something I can’t do — sing, dance, perform surgery — somebody tells me not to quit my day job. The only people who want me to quit are my bosses, who don’t realize that the reason I have my day job is that I am spectacularly unqualified to do anything else.

Still, you never know when you will no longer be gainfully (or, in my case, ungainfully) employed. So, because I have had a fair career, I recently went to a career fair. It was held, perhaps not coincidentally, at the company where I work on Long Island, New York.

The first thing I found out, after stopping at a table sponsored by my company, is that I couldn’t get a job with my company. That’s because they were looking for someone to provide technical support.

“Technically speaking, my 3-year-old granddaughter is more advanced than I am,” I admitted, “which means she would have to support me.”

“Can you do anything else?” asked Craig Brusseler, talent manager for operations.

“Aside from telling bad jokes, I have no talent,” I said. “And hospital patients wouldn’t trust me to do operations.”

But Chrissy Huber, a sales recruiter, thought I had promise.

“You have a good personality,” she noted, “so you could go door to door to convince people who have switched to another cable company to come back to us.”

“What if somebody thought I was a scam artist and called the cops?” I wondered. “I don’t want to go back to prison.”

Chrissy raised her eyebrows, extended her hand and said, “Good luck with your job search.”

I had bad luck at the next table, which was sponsored by BMW.

“We are looking for technicians,” said recruiter Stefan Schedel.

“I’d have an easier time transcribing the Dead Sea Scrolls than telling you what’s going on under the hood of a car,” I confessed.

“I’m afraid you’re not the kind of person we’re looking for,” said Renai Ellison, another recruiter.

“Could I at least get a free car out of the deal?” I asked.

I didn’t. But I did get a free tote bag. I dropped in the Cablevision Frisbee and the pen I got from my company.

Next I stopped at the Liberty Mutual table, where Maureen Baranello and Robert Moore were looking for someone to sell insurance.

“It involves outside referrals,” Maureen said.

“I don’t like working outside,” I replied. “What if it rains?”

“Buy a raincoat and an umbrella,” Robert suggested.

I told the two recruiters about the time I got into a car accident that was caused by a guy whose GPS told him to go the wrong way down a one-way street.

“Your company covered the damage,” I said.

“You can tell that story to potential customers,” said Maureen.

“Does the job include crunching numbers?” I inquired.

“Yes,” Robert said. “Lots of them.”

“I’ll have to disqualify myself,” I said. “One of the reasons I went into journalism is because I can’t do math. I’d bankrupt your company in a week.”

I’d do the same to Bethpage Federal Credit Union, whose recruiter, Amanda Shatel, said I couldn’t refinance my mortgage so I wouldn’t have any more payments.

“I helped bail out the banks,” I pointed out. “Would yours do the same for me?”

“Sorry,” said Amanda, who gave me a free letter opener so I could open my mortgage statements.

I visited other tables — including those sponsored by Riverhead Building Supply, where I got a paint stick and a rubber hammer; The Arbors, which runs assisted living communities, where I got another pen; and David Lerner Associates, an investment broker, where I got a handshake — but nothing panned out.

“Did you go to the career fair?” one of my bosses asked when I returned to my desk.

“Yes,” I said.

“How’d it go?” he wondered.

“Bad news,” I said. “I’m not quitting my day job.”

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima