It really was all Greek to me.

Thank God I was in a sorority.

I never thought that joining the Greek system would eventually save my marriage, but it did. My sorority saved my marriage because they forced me to learn the Greek alphabet. In what turned out to be one of the most useful 10 minute periods of my existence, I had to learn to sing a bunch of inane songs while bouncing around, acting cheerful and generally pretending that joining a sorority was almost as good as winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

SORORITY SISTERS: Hey! We're Greek! Greek is cool!!! Join our club! Please join our club or we'll never get to stop singing! HELP US!

You may be wondering how singing songs that were supposed to attract potential "sisters" saved my marriage. It's a long story. One of the songs that we learned was a musical version of the Greek alphabet. I'm not really sure when I learned it. It may have been implanted in my mind through advanced sorority brainwashing techniques. At any rate, after several hours of learning peppy songs, I had the Greek alphabet memorized. This information has rarely come in handy, but I have managed to maintain this knowledge in some forgotten corner of my brain. I can't remember where my keys are, or the name of the 9th supreme court justice, but I know the Greek alphabet, by God! Not once had I ever needed this information, and yet, it remained.

But then, last month my husband and I found ourselves in Crete. And, being egocentric Americans who receive more education in sports than in languages, we figured that there would be street signs in ENGLISH. Or, at least in a Latin alphabet. Instead, the street signs looked like this:

Given enough time, I was eventually able to sound out the signs, cross-reference them with our guidebooks and then determine that, without any doubt at all, we were lost.

The sign to the left, for instance says "Slow - Goat Crossing" in English in Greek letters. I would have written it in Greek words, but I'm an egocentric American who doesn't know any foreign languages whatsoever, especially foreign languages which deal with livestock.

So, my husband and I came up with an infallible system, where he drove around at top speeds in the city, asking me every five seconds where we were, and I would look hopelessly around for a street sign, and begin to decode it, only to find that we were still driving, and thus on another street, so my original efforts at decoding were all for naught. This continued until we hit a wall. Well, we didn't really hit the wall, but we did encounter a wall which surrounded the old city of Heraklion. Matt began immediately asking me for our whereabouts, to which I replied, "I don't know."

Matt: Well, look at the map!

Me: I am looking at the map!

Matt: Where are we then?

Me: I think we're at a wall.

Matt: Which wall?

Me: THE WALL. THE GIANT WALL SURROUNDING THE CITY.

Matt: Are you sure?

Me: It looks LIKE A WALL TO ME. If you stop near a street sign, I might be able to find out exactly where on the wall we are.

Matt: I can't stop.

Me: Then I can't tell you where we are, because as soon as I figure out where we are, we're not there anymore!

As each sign passed me in a blur, I began to chant my Greek alphabet song, in a vain attempt to meditate my way to some clue as to where we were. We stopped talking to each other. We kept driving past the one landmark that I knew, and each time would arrive at that landmark from a different direction. By some miracle that I cannot explain, Matt finally stopped the car and went to the nearest hotel he could find to ask for directions. I used these moments of stillness to find out where we were. It was easy, once I could see the signs. And, with the directions that I am still amazed my husband went and asked for, and my ever-expanding knowledge of the Greek Alphabet, I was able to navigate us to our hotel, which we had apparently driven past about 20 times. When we started speaking to each other again, we had a lovely time.

So, without my vast knowledge of Greek, given to me by 60 overly peppy girls wearing bad late-80's fashion and large hair, Matt and I would probably be divorced right now. We'd also still be in Crete, since we wouldn't be able to find the airport.