Today’s guest post is written by Lisa Gerber.

It’s my last post as chief content officer for Spin Sucks today. I’m feeling a little nostalgic, so I hope you’ll indulge me in a story.

Ever since I was six years old, I have had a love affair with language.

Then, my love was mostly for foreign languages. I loved the idea that people used different words to speak in different cultures. In fact, do you remember Steve Martin’s warning to potential visitors to France?

“Oeuf means egg. Chapeau means hat. It’s like, those French have a different word for everything.”

I used to imagine I could speak a different language. My nutty little self would speak in a foreign tongue with my dollies. Then, as I got older, I took French as soon as I could – in the fifth grade. I also started reading books voraciously.  (more…)