I watch too much Seinfeld.

As you might have seen on Facebook, some of my friends and I are involved in a bit of a contest. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and early in the morning last week an idea came to me. We all wish we were speaking more French, but we’re just so damn good at English. I’m pretty sure humans are lazy by nature, which is why we invented the wheel. There’s nothing wrong with being lazy, because without that motivation to make life easier, we never would have built the society we have today. Unfortunately being lazy isn’t going to help me get better at French.

Like most of life’s situations, I quickly realized there was an episode of Seinfeld that dealt with this very similarly. The episode is called “The Contest” and I’m not going to lie, it’s hilarious. The Seinfeld four all throw down some money to see how long they can go abstaining from a certain activity. Since I know my Grandma reads this blog, I’m not going to talk about what that is. So my friends and I have all thrown down a small sum of money (just 3€ each) to see how long we can go without speaking English.

There are obviously exceptions to this rule. We all have armies of family and friends back home who don’t speak French. One can’t expect themselves to bar communication with the outside world for the sake of competition. That’s just stupid. So we can use our computers in English. We can speak English during specified English speaking periods (courses taught in English, language exchange dinner, and English tutoring). There are a few more exceptions that I won’t spell out, but the point is that they exist. Attn France folk blog creepin’: if you want a copy of the contract I can email it to you.

We even set up a court system for when a contestant wants a fair trial, if they think they can make their case that they should still be allowed in the system. All judgments made by this court will set precedent and become contract law, should future problems arise. I guess someone in my group had to be the nerd who thinks of all of these things. Of course that someone is me.

(Oh no, she thinks she’s a lawyer again…)

We’re playing by the honor system. That might seem farfetched to some people, but I’m fine with it. I trust my friends not to break the rules, and I know they trust me too. That’s how this system works. I might be a bitch, but I’m not a liar.

If I make it a week I’ll be happy. If I win I’ll be even happier. And if I wasn’t already filing papers to have my middle name legally changed to Danger, I’d make a joke here about how winning was my middle name. Mind games are my specialty. Anyone who has played Circle of Death with me while I was ‘Quizmaster’ can attest to that.

Duh, #winning.

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Update: Since I still don’t have internet, there’s a bit of a delay between when these things are written and when they are posted. I wrote this yesterday, and was going to post it this morning. I knocked on my roommate’s door and asked her for the papers that came with the internet box to try and figure it out, and we had a brief exchange. We went back to doing our own activities, and then I paused,

“Dru…we’re speaking English.”
“Shit.”
“I think we both just lost.”
“Yup.”

I could edit this post and go back and remove that cocky paragraph, but I won’t. I made it two full days, and failed without even realizing it right away. This is hard. Turns out when you spend the first part of the morning alone in your room, and then go talk to another English speaker, odds are you’re both very likely to revert back to your natural tendencies. I know I said I’d be happy if I made it a week, and I clearly didn’t last that long. But I’m not upset, because it’s just too damn funny.

Better luck next time, Wilson.