The letter and the gnat.

I slept a lot through High School French.

I realized this recently during one of my six essay-exams in French. It's frustrating when you can talk for hours about International Law in a foreign language, but you're sitting there at the start of the next paragraph thinking,
"Fuck! What's the best connection word between these paragraphs? WHY did I throw away that hand-out?!WHYY!!!??"

Again, at the prefecture of Police today, when I officially decided to end my status as a visa overstay/illegal alien, my lack of attention span in High School came back to spite me. Now, I'm not only a little late with my application, I'm oh....3 months late.

Sitting in front of a surly Martiniquan woman, I had to answer a question I didn't really have an answer for: "So why did you wait 6 months to apply for your residence permit?!"
Possible answers included:
"I did nothing but drink the first two months here before school started"
"I'm completely lazy" or, even,
"Landlord tried to suck my blood, have had to bat her off with a broom for the past few months" (which is true)

Instead of beating me while during a ritualistic dance of the bureaucrats, It turns out, I only had to write a letter in front of the Martinquan fonctionnaire.
YES, a LETTER saying I was sorry and why I was so late turning in my dossier. So, I start out and write some complete bullshit about having difficulty finding the necessary documents, etc. etc. Then I get to the end. The French add some sentence at the end of every letter before the signature that is some variation of

"Let me lick your ass and offer you my best sentiments" or, for more severe letters,

"Lick my ass and give me your the assurance of your best wishes!"

I blanked. I had no fucking clue how to write this. In the ONE opportunity where someone stuck a piece of paper in front of me (outside of High School) and said, "GO! WRITE AN IMPORTANT LETTER IN FRENCH!" I couldn't perform. Damn you, IB French. Damn you attention span similar to that of an ADD gnat! Damn, damn, damn.

On the plus side, I'm a little less illegal today. I'll drink to that.