May 30, 2008

French Vanilla

By In Photography, Thoughts


Honey Nut Chex combined with vanilla-flavored soy milk is the second most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. By the way, thanks a lot French language, you jerk. I started out the first sentence of this post capitalizing almost every word. I had to go back and change them all back to English. See, I used to have perfect grammar and punctuation. Yes, I admit, I was one of those annoying people who corrected others all the time. Then I took French for three years. And French people capitalize every word you would never capitalize in English, and they blow off the important words.

So why did I take French? Because I had heard that a girl I liked from grade school was going to take French at my high school. So freshman year, I coyly signed up. And then she decided to attend another school. Story of my life. I tried to not take it personally, and decided to continue taking French because I thought it would be a good way to woo women. Then, junior year, or is it Junior Year, she showed up. She had transferred. But it wasn’t her anymore. She had changed. I had bitterly moved on. She had bad skin and was totally screwing up my polka-dotted skirt eighth grade school graduation dance memory of her. And what did I have? Bad punctuation, an unsteady grasp of a foreign language I would probably never use, and a messed up mental image of the girl I liked from three years ago. After the fantasy was over, I didn’t take that fourth year of French.

Seriously, I feel like I’ve lived my whole like like this. What’s wrong with me? And why am I posting so much?

Written by Jon Hillenbrand

Jon Hillenbrand is a Chicago-based artist working in photography and filmmaking. He has over 15 years of professional award-winning experience working both locally and nationally in television, print and web advertising. He currently calls Evanston, IL home.