As a kid, my mind bubbled over with dreams of the places and people that existed beyond the borders of my small town. This dreaming manifested itself in an insatiable appetite for learning about the world in any way I could. Looking back, it seems silly to think that, while folding origami cranes or breathing in the smell of Domino’s pizza, I would close my eyes and imagine that I was surrounded by Buddhist monks or gondoliers.

But in my family, where my college-bound aspirations were the first of their kind, and in my 5,000-person town, where my dreams of exotic lands fell in sharp contrast with the monotony of Pennsylvania pastorals, pizza and paper cranes were as close to the outside world as I could get.

My world burst open when I started taking French classes in 7th grade. Two weeks into the school year, the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington occurred. When our principal announced the situation over the loudspeaker during my English class, no one really understood the gravity of the attacks, but many immediately started crying. We couldn’t see photos or videos or hear official accounts; we just knew that we felt vulnerable.

By the end of eighth grade, in what felt to a preteen me like a series of quickly made decisions, the US had attacked Afghanistan and invaded Iraq, places that I hadn’t really even heard of. When France, under the aegis of President Jacques Chirac, objected to the invasion, the US lashed back in one of the weirdest ways possible, by renaming purportedly “French” foods on the cafeteria menus at Congress.

French fries became Freedom fries; French toast, Freedom toast.

My middle school friends and I joked about taking this to extremes––Mozart’s famous Freedom horn concerto, fellow students’ first times Freedom kissing their crushes, and (of course) that language I spent hours of week learning in a stuffy classroom that smelled like coffee and cigarettes.

At the very beginning of my French language education, my first time feeling connected with a world bigger than my small town, something that interested me so much was seen as an entirely too unpatriotic field of study.

In the time since—in reading Fanon and Saint-Exupery, Beauvoir and Djebbar—I have heard plenty of derisive comments about my young life’s passion. But with every page, with every word, my mind has been filled with such an intense longing to feel connected to something larger.

When I feel ostracized from the world around me, even at this point in my life, my knowledge and passion for learning has allowed me to transcend the banalities of that world, even if just for the short moments when my nose is tucked inside a book or when my throat vibrates with the music of some French impressionist composer.

Perhaps to the dismay of my 2001-era government (and my 2001-era self), French has become a gateway to freedom within my own life.

Je suis, et je serai, francophone.

By Jake Nelson