Nerds, Bongs & Bumper Stickers: Relearning English in 1980s California

We landed in San Francisco in the middle of the night. It was 1985 and the entire state was a dark, blank slate. I was French. I was eleven years old. I was ready to reinvent myself.

My first impressions were flatlands, streetlights, highways — and Denny’s. In my father’s defense, it was the only open restaurant at two o’clock in the morning, and having spent a few weeks on his own, living in a dark suite in a Bay Area motel, he just wanted to sit down for a meal with his family. The interior was faded but we were new to it all — fresh and fascinated. I can’t remember what we ordered. I’m sure my mother navigated that menu like an explosive ordinance expert, finding the least corruptible items. I still remember the sign: bright, yellow, eternal. To me, it still says, “Welcome to America!”

The very next day, my understanding of the English language began to explode. “Salad,” I ordered in a local diner, imagining a safe, small toss of lettuce. There were no infinite diner menus where I’d come from — no breakfast all day, no coleslaw, no key lime pies. The waitress brought me a heaping frisbee-sized plate of roughage, topped with a large, molded hunk of green jello. I poked it and delighted in the wobble. I wasn’t allowed to eat it.