El­sa Wrench

"Do you have chives?'' my rich and fab­u­lous Amer­i­can friend Elle asked. "I need chives for the chick­en breasts. I hate bland chick­en with­out chives for the sea­son­ing.''

By the third "chives'' I was ready to beat her sense­less with the naked chick­en breasts right there in her own ren­o­vat­ed kitchen. She pro­nounced the "ch'' as in chair and hissed the "s'' at the end. Amer­i­cans do that. At first, I thought she was hav­ing a stroke or some­thing. Thanks to Elle, I am so much more en­light­ened than I was a week ago.

Here is what else I dis­cov­ered on my jour­ney of con­tin­u­ous learn­ing.

1. There is no law against Amer­i­cans mis­pro­nounc­ing per­fect­ly good names of herbs. There should be.

2. I am not go­ing to get any smarter, no mat­ter how many cross­word puz­zles I com­plete. But I am get­ting bet­ter at pre­tend­ing.

3. I have per­fect blood pres­sure. The flut­ter­ing of my heart is not a sign of a heart at­tack.

4. Chang­ing gears in a stick-shift pick-up is not that dif­fi­cult. It is al­most fun.

5. A pack of man­go an­char con­tains a huge amount of calo­ries.

6. A brisk 45-minute walk burns on­ly about 200 calo­ries.

7. My se­cret tal­ent is mu­sic. An on­line quiz told me so. My pi­ano teacher owes me an apol­o­gy.

8. If I were a Star Trek char­ac­ter, I would be Bones.

9. The Robo­cop sto­ry­line has not im­proved with time.

10. I am not get­ting any thin­ner.

?