Hi Silver:

I'm something of a polyglot. I can converse in a whole bunch of different languages. Doesn't make me smart. It just means I have a good ear for learning languages. Can't count for beans, but put me in another country and in two days I'll be asking where's the salami? in their native tongue.

Around my neck of the woods, we are all italian, so if I want to talk to the person next door, the person who lives downstairs or my landlord, who lives on the other side of me, I better know sicilian or no one would have a conversation. Now the peope upstairs, are from Lebanon so they speak arabic and french. Since I learned french over 30 years ago, once they moved in upstairs, I naturally fell back into remembering it. It's good to know stuff, makes the brain work.

I once worked for a german office in NYC. They hired me because I could speak french. They spoke german, french, spanish and english. I will never forget the time Herr Schlubach (that was my boss), called me up from some country he was in and told me "Melody, you are getting a telex (this was WAY before fax machines came along). He said "I want you to read it to me "I said "Herr Schlubach, I don't speak german". He said "don't worry, you can pronounce anything so just read me the telex". So there I was, saying words like Gefstumple, bein ein, nicht, blah, blah. for a good 5 minutes. He started laughing and said "I understood everything you said, we must send you to school to learn german. I said "Listen, don't make my brain go nuts, it's enough that I can do stuff in french and maybe some spanish.

And oh, this might impress you. I used to work with Miriam Makeba's daughter, this was over 35 years ago. Her name was Bongi. She and I spoke French. I think I was in my early twenties. We never knew who she was until she left the company and then we learned that she was Miriam Makeba's (she's a very famous South African singer) daughter. What a lovely young girl she was. She died in 1985. We only knew she was from South Africa and she would curtsy everytime she was introduced to someone. She must have been 18 or 19. So once we were reading a magazine in the office and when we opened it, there was Bongi on the stage with Miriam Makeba and the description read: "Miriam Makeba with her daughter Bongi". Well, we all went nuts in the office.

See, I even knew some famous people. And if any of you ever watched the tv show TAXI, remember the bartender, when all of the cab drivers used to go into the restaurant after work), they used to call him Tommy!!!,well the bartender was played by TJ Castronova, (my mother's first cousin).

Too bad the acting bug wasn't passed on to me. I could have been a bilingual actress.

lol

Melody