Numerical Dyslexia

Back in August, I transferred my old cell phone to a friend who needed a contracted phone for a year. I had a year left on my contract, and wanted to stitch to a new contract with a new phone. Giving her my old phone was a good deal for both of us.

However, when I'd signed up for that old phone, I'd signed up for insurance on it too. I'd noticed that the 8 euros for insurance every month came out of my bank account separately than the phone bill, but it'd never bothered me. Until I switched the phone contract over to my friend...and was still be charged for the insurance.

On a phone I no longer posses. Hmmm...how to fix that?

I went down to the store of the mobile provider on the old phone and asked them how to cancel the insurance. They told me I would have to call the customer service. Oh man, I just love talking on the phone in French. (Note the sarcasm.) I called them, and they informed me that the insurance had been provided through the store where I bought the phone (in Besançon), and not through the mobile provider. Well, I can't really just run over to Besançon and pop into the store, now can I?

I looked up where one of those stores might be in Marseille...not anywhere easy for me to get to. So I looked up on their website a way to contact them. While there was no phone number to call, there was a messaging system within the website. So I shot them a message with my email address explaining the situation (thank you, Google Translate), and that I would like to cancel the insurance on the phone no longer in my possession.

They emailed me back with the phone number to call. Oh boy, here we go again with the talking on the phone in French.

When I called, it was one of the automated teller things where you have to press numbers for various options. None of the options were to speak to a human being. All of the options were said in speedy-French with words I didn't catch/know/understand/etc. Ack. I called five different times pressing various number options all the while talking into my phone that I just wanted to talk to a person.

Which is humorous in French because the word for 'person' and the word for 'nobody' is the same. (Which really confused me when I first started speaking French.) So I'm sitting there pressing buttons saying, "somebody," "anybody," "nobody" into the phone by just saying "personne" over and over and over.

Suddenly, a person answered! Joy! I gave my new have-mercy-on-me schpeal of, "Hi. I'm a foreigner, so French isn't my first language, but I'm going to try." I've found that that line said with my "charming" (read: Southern) accent can get a girl far in this country. The operator laughed and said, "We can do it!"

I explained the situation and she told me it would be easy to cancel my insurance. I just need to send a letter with the code she will give me to a certain address.

Wait. You can't just click click click and it's done? I have to write a letter in French?! That's worse than the phone because I can't use my charming accent to win over whoever reads the letter. And while Google Translate might be the best thing since sliced bread, it's not perfect. And certainly not perfect enough to win over a French paper-pusher who loves for their ridiculously irregular language to be impossibly perfect in written form.

Stress.

She starts to tell me the code and I stress out even more. It's all numbers. I hate numbers.I think I have some sort of numerical dyslexia. My brain just jumbles them all up and I go into a panic freeze. Now take that and make me do it in another language and I have mental meltdowns.

I somehow managed to understand all the numbers in the code, and even repeated them back to her to verify that I'd gotten them correct. Then she goes to give me the address where I need to mail the letter. And when she says the number of the building, the mental meltdown occurs.

She said, "Soixante dix." She kept talking to tell me the street name, but I was frozen.

Soixante dix? I can't remember what number that is. ACK!

In French, every number from 1-69 has its own word. Starting with 70, they say "sixty ten, sixty ten one, sixty ten two" and so on until 80, when they say, "four twenty, four twenty one," and so on. Do you see why I hate numbers in French? I hear "four" and immediately start trying to figure out if they're saying "four" or "forty" or "eighty" or "four hundred." Ack.

So I guess I'd reached my numerical limit when she'd given me the code number because my brain could not process soixante dix. Could not. I asked to please wait a moment for me to catch up. I kept muttering "soixante dix" under my breath.

I even spelled it out. What is the matter with me that I can spell it out, but can't mentally register the number that represents it?!

She finally says in shy, broken English, "I zink it iz seven sero."

"YES! Merci!"

We finished and I hung up. Traumatized. Embarrassed. Five years in France and I still can't get my numbers straight.

And now I have to write a letter in French. Ack.