My new Spanish tutor

Me gusto me instructor nuevo.  Nosotros hemos tenido uno leccion solamente y comprendo mucho mas que antes.  Yo he faltado a aprender el tiempo pasado muchas veces, pero Kenn ha abierto la puerta a la pasado.  Por ahora, olvidare el preterito.  En lugar del preterito, voy a concentrar a aprender el presente perfecto.  Lo es mas facil y mas flexible tambien.

See?  I couldn't have done that last week, because it contains past tense references.  So, how many times have I taken Spanish lessons only to give up when I hit the wall of past tense?  Sure, I can do the exercises and I can even pass the tests, but I just can't seem to get a solid grip on it.  There are just too many variables and they slither and slide around in my brain until they become just a pile of mush.   Take a boo at this chart and see just how many tenses the Spanish language has.  C'mon, my brain is 56 years old and already full of stuff like the lyrics to Gilligan's Island theme song, there's just not that much free RAM left.

And why in all this time has nobody ever told me that I don't have to master the preterite in order to communicate things that happened in the past?  Sheesh!  I've been bashing my head against the past tense for so long that I just figured I would never be able to have a normal conversation.  Ever.  Period.  Because I'm stupid and I just don't get it!

So Kenn (yes, nn) comes over on Monday morning and within ½ an hour he showed me an easier way to do it.  Sure, I've studied the "present perfect" tense in classes before, but nobody has ever explained just how versatile it is.  I thought it had limited applications and wouldn't quite cut it as a sure fire way to convey past actions, so I discounted it.  Wrong!  It's much more versatile than the others and WAY easier too. 

There will come a point when I'll be needing the nuances of the preterito, the pluscuamperfecto, the preterito anterior and the seventeen other ways to speak in the past tense, but for now, I'm happy to be able to communicate simple concepts like " I have already eaten, thank you."