A while since I heard that one

Living in Germany, I always get the same question from people: Do you miss the United States?

And I always tell them the same thing: Not desperately, but sometimes I do, yes.

Well, something happened the other day that definitely made me miss the U.S.

I was in a class teaching English and one of my students — he was a clever guy, who I think had spent some time living in New York — said a phrase that I hadn’t heard in a long time.

See, for some reason, another student had asked me what would happen if she got caught cheating on a test in the United States. Would the teacher fail her automatically, she wanted to know, or would the teacher give her a second chance.

“Oh, you would definitely fail,” I told her. And that was when the student who had lived in New York spoke up, “Yeah, you would fail,” he said, “do not pass 'Go,' do not collect $200.”

And there it was. “Do not pass 'Go,' do not collect $200.” Wow, it had been so long since I had heard someone use that phrase, at least in a sarcastic way.

Now, don’t get me wrong, people in Germany speak English very well. They can hold normal conversations as well as sophisticated ones. But there are certain words and turns of phrases that only native speakers use or are aware of.

And “Do not pass 'Go,' do not collect $200” is definitely one of them.

Hearing the phrase after not having heard it for so long just made me miss being surrounded by people who really spoke my language, who I could communicate perfectly with, who really understand the humor behind certain sayings and the import of certain words.

After the student said the "Do not pass 'Go'" phrase, he looked at me with an expression that seemed to say, “You like how I know that, right?”

And I guess, in the end, I sort of did. Though the phrase made me miss home, it also, if just for a moment, brought me closer to it.