Behind the Eight Ball

I went to Spanish class on Thursday with my homework in hand, ready for more intellectual abuse.

As always, we started by going over the homework...and I had done it wrong, wrong, wrong! I thought it was supposed to be one way and it was supposed to be another way. What I thought I knew, was wrong. I even argued with la professora.

So, from the beginning of class I was screwed, behind the eight ball, the runt of the litter, out to lunch, off on the wrong foot, brain dead.

And that was how I spent the entire 2 hours...completely brain dead.

I couldn't come up with anything. I couldn't come up with stuff I knew well. There was nothing in the grey matter under my hair.

I have rarely, if ever, been that clueless and without any thought whatsoever.

We were working on the second of five past tenses in Spanish.

That's right, you read right, 5...count them...5 past tenses. What kind of bullshit is that?

No wonder I can't hear Spanish when spoken. If you know the root word, that is no help at all because it is pronounced at least 25 different ways when used.

I tried to figure out how I could get that confused. Too many decisions required to come up with a verb. At least 4.

First, what root verb (In Spanish, the infinitive). Then what tense (Past, present, future and quite a few more). Then what person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, singular or plural). And, if it is the past tense, which is a very common tense in normal conversation, which one of 5 is it.

Each of these decisions takes at least a split second, if not a second or too. By now, my listener is gone, off doing something useful with their life rather than waiting around for me to come up with THE RIGHT F$#@$#! VERB!!!

That is why you can't think and speak. It has to be automatic.

I have always had problems hearing Spanish.

But, I have not had a problem speaking it, other than vocabulary. The grammar has not been a problem.

And now it is...shit! The one skill I had has disappeared.