Surprises

In order to resume my readings in philosophy, I recently got two books from a fellow teacher who’s also a polyglot, a writer, a theologian, a translator and a philosopher. One of those books provided a sample of her work as a translator while in the other I could know her as an author as well, all that interesting in its own right.

When I got home with those books, to my surprise, my 20 year old son showed an interest in reading these books himself, too. I lent him the books and told him to read them through first, since I was busy with other kind of stuff at the moment. Still more surprised I got when he told me in short what he read in the preface of one of the books, since it was in French. I simply didn’t know he could understand so well a couple of pages written in French.

The first time I saw my colleague after that, of course I told her this story about my son and her books, and she seemed to find a father’s ignorance of his own son’s ability to read in a foreign language unusual.

Back home that day, I told my son about the interview entertained with my colleague, author of the books he was reading. He just commented, “I didn’t know I could read French, either”.