I turned to my children in the metro today and announced: I need to tell you something. Everyday while we are in Paris you are going to be embarrassed by something we do. I may not know where to go, how to ask for something, how to find what we are looking for. It will be embarrassing and we will be humiliated at least once a day. Now get over it and let's have fun.
What a relief for them. We had just spent way, I mean way too long, finding out about getting a long-term metro card today. It involved having a passport picture made at a photo booth in the metro. It cost 5E, the picture. I wasn't sure I had enough change. We were digging around in bags. It took an ungodly amount of time. But finally like little butterflies we emerged with our pictures and bought cards and made our way to Tuileries for a short lunch and to L'Orangerie so we could be tourists of all tourists and see Monet's still-engaging water lilies. We also saw these paintings by Marie Laurencin of ballerina-mermaids morphing into deers. The strange thing is that they all had long gray hair - and Just the day before I had seen one of the talked-of young ladies of Paris who dye their hair gray - while we were picnicking in Place des Vosges.
Yesterday's humiliations involved visiting the ginormous food market on Richard Lenoir to buy said picnic packings. You have to ask the grocer for each thing. You should, if you are not rude, ask pertinent questions about legumes and fruits. I just noted that the young man in front of me asked a lot of questions then bought pears and the strawberries on the left, so, I bought pears and berries. What a delight when Ms. Scott's 12th grade French came rolling back with that list of grocery items. Thank you Ms. Scott, because you were right, you never know when you might need to know the word for raspberries. I forced Stephen and Joshua to split up from us and buy a few things - mostly because I didn't want them to see me absolutely fail if I mispronounced fraises, and also because everyone should know how to ask for something when they don't have any words.
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I remember being in Paris at Au Printemps (does that store still exist?) with my high school French teacher and a group of students. I got separated form the rest of the group briefly and was taking pictures of something. A woman came up to me and started speaking to me in French, and while I managed the initial pleasantries, I was soon lost. And when she realized this, she regarded me with utter contempt, said in French something that translated roughly to "You know nothing of our language!" and stalked off.
ReplyDeleteAll this by way of saying, yes, it's good to be able to say "framboise" and "fraise" and know the difference...
Yes David all those Parisiens are still here guarding their language, making sure I don't defile it...And I remember Printemps...not sure if it's here still or not! I am planning however a field trip to Bon Marche when I have my head together for some real shopping, for, of course, gourmet treats.
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