A co-worker waylaid me with a question this morning.

Pointing at her computer monitor, she asked me “Can you read German?”

I looked at the screen, and it was plainly in German, but beyond that basic conclusion it was pretty incomprehensible.

So I said, “I’m sorry, high school German was a long time ago.”

and this didn’t seem enough, for some reason, so after a pause I added “in high school”.

this I thought was a little bit ridiculous, so after another pause I added “which was a good time to take high school classes I suppose.”

I don’t think I helped my case at any point.