Tag Archives: French

August 29, 2012 · 9:35 pm

French is Dangerous

You’ve heard me talk about this before (Merde 101).  But the world has gotten more dangerous since I wrote that piece.  We need to be on the lookout.  We need to be vigilant.  We need to speak English.  No, this is not an anti-immigrant piece.  This is a potential-worldwide-calamity-caused-by-incomprehensible-grammar piece.

Yes, it’s true.  I’m saying that all roads to terrorism are sign-posted in FRENCH.  Believe me.  I lived there.  I know.  Well, I don’t know the language, but I know those signposts.  And what they say.  More or less.

Why would I make such an accusation?  Because French is stupid.

Well, actually, it’s really French possessives.  French possessives are stupid, illogical, dangerous.

You see, in French, objects get the gender of the object/noun, not the owner.  And that, is of course, the problem.

Imagine that there is a man and a woman in a train station.  Between them is a suitcase.

Google Image (or KGB?)

In it is a nuclear bomb.  Desperate to foil the bad guys, you cannot just shout out “It’s HIS!” pointing to the man who can be arrested and the bomb diffused.

Google Images are everywhere

Why not?

Because the word for suitcase in French is “valise” which is feminine.  Therefore, you can only say “It’s HERS” (“Est la valise!”) — regardless of who owns the suitcase/nuclear bomb.  The bomb would go off and everyone would die.

The terrorists would succeed because French is stupid.

Not speaking French is the way to protect the world.

*****

One of my blogging buddies, Paprika of Good Humored felt stupid recently.  She wrote about it here:  At Least We Can See France From Our Toilet.  And it’s not her fault.  You see, Paprika and her husband Oregano found themselves in French-speaking Switzerland, just down the road from where I used to live.  They came back feeling stupid.  They shouldn’t have.  Instead, they should have come back relieved that they had survived a nuclear attack.

[Note to folks who actually know French:  Before you get on my case, I do know that there are other was to say “It’s HIS.” But they are not short, sweet and to the point.  They are long and involved and the bomb would explode by the time anyone could get the sentence out.  The Terrorists would still win.]

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June 8, 2012 · 7:50 am

An International Life of Crime

The State of New Jersey just passed a new law requiring pet owners to restrain their pets in the car.  It’s become known as the Seamus law, after Mitt Romney’s dog Seamus who famously rode to Canada on the roof of Mitt’s car.

Now I have mixed feelings about this law.  It was designed to keep primarily dogs from distracting the driver.  Which is a good thing.  But I’m worried that it will lead to a crime wave.

Because restraining my dog led me to bribe an official of the French government.  Somehow I eluded authorities and remain a free woman.  But there is a lesson here.  And that lesson is this:

Restraint results in a loss of freedom

Yes, it’s true.  I am profound.  And awesome.  And a hardened criminal.

So what happened, Elyse? you say, wondering if you really want to know about my life of crime.  And you know I’m going to tell you.

*   *   *

When we got Cooper in 1998, we owned a Toyota Picnic, a little six seat van not available in the U.S.  It was kind of a vomit van, actually, because it was well known to induce vomiting by anyone who traveled with us.  We kept a large supply of cleaning supplies with us at all times.

Anyway, I read an article about how, if you stop suddenly, while traveling at 60 mph, a 50 lb Springer Spaniel dog will be traveling significantly faster as he flies through the car.  He will, in fact, become a projectile and might end up killing your kid.

Now I liked the dog a lot even at that early stage.  But I didn’t really relish the idea of the dog killing my kid to whom I was quite attached.  So, to scorn and jeers from John, I bought Cooper a special doggie seat belt that attached to the seatbelt of the seat behind the driver’s.

Cooper, however, did not approve of this new restraint.  I presume I hadn’t adequately educated him on the importance of self-restraint.  Because he ate his restraint.  And he had started eating the seatbelt too when I realized what was happening and released the rebel.  Who then happily sat wherever he wanted in the back of the vomit van.

Fortunately, Cooper hadn’t really done much damage to the seatbelt.  There were only a few bites taken out of it; it worked perfectly well and was not a safety hazard.

But when we moved across the border into France a couple of years later, well, we had to have the car inspected.  And the French car inspectors are famous for flunking Americans.  According to my husband, anyway.  And so I faced the villains alone.

Now, before you jump all over my husband for sending me into the lion’s den, well there is something you should know.  My husband cannot lie.  He cannot stretch the truth.  He cannot exaggerate.  Worse in this case, he would not have been able to restrain himself from explaining to the inspector that it really was not a safety issue.

Me, well, I’m different.  I grew up getting away with high crimes and misdemeanors.  I rarely got caught, and when I did, well, I got out of it. I’ve had practice.

So whenever we needed to deal with the French government, well, it was all up to me.

I drove to wherever it was, produced my paperwork, and waited my turn.  Truthfully, I was nervous.  I didn’t want to have to spend $1 zillion replacing a seat belt (car repairs in Switzerland/France are tres cher).  So I fidgeted with the container of mints in my pocket.  Tic Tacs.

When my turn came, I was outside with the inspector, chatting to him.  He was a young guy, and was nice and helpful as I tried to have a chatty conversation with him in my pigeon French. In fact, he couldn’t have been nicer to me.

Plus, the car was in great shape, clean and nearly perfectly maintained.  He found nothing wrong on the outside.  Then he opened the front passenger side, and tested the seat belt.  He closed the door and went to the rear passenger seat, and tested that one.

I started to sweat.  The chewed one was next.

He went around and opened the rear driver’s side door.  And that’s when I did it.

“Tic Tac?” I asked him, holding out the container.

“Oui, merci, madame,” he responded, closing that door without looking at the damaged seat belt.  He took a Tic Tac, and proceeded to inspect the driver’s seat belt.

My car passed inspection with flying colors.

And I continued to live a life of crime in France, just outside of Geneva for two years.

*   *   *

So, if you are going to be driving through New Jersey with your dog you have two choices:

Restrain him or buy yourself a three-pack of Tic Tacs.

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November 6, 2011 · 9:38 am

You’ve Got a Friend

This time it wasn’t my fault.  I didn’t break it.  John did.

Well, we had been meaning to replace the stereo for a while.  It went on without our help, changed from the radio to a CD and would often stop playing for no reason.  Other times it just wouldn’t turn off.  Perhaps it didn’t like our choice in music.  There was a short in it that no one could find.  Well, either that or we had to admit it was haunted.  We decided that broken is way better than spooky.

So that very day when I was writing about how I like to smack stuff, my husband was putting the nail in our stereo’s coffin.

You see, it was playing a song by Steely Dan.  John hates Steely Dan.  He hit the button on the remote, but the song continued.

Ricky don’t lose that number. 

John rushed over to the stereo and pushed the button, gently the first time.  Harder and harder with each successive, um, press of the button.  Until it stopped.  Permanently.   He smacked the stereo’s power button so hard that Ricky lost the number.  Ricky, in fact, would never come back, at least not through that stereo.  It’s dead.

So today we got a new, shock absorbing model.  And putting it onto the shelf sent me back to the last time music haunted me.

We had just moved to Geneva; it was 1997.  Living full-time in a place where they speak another language makes you long for English.  Passionately.  Desperately.  So when my new friend Allison Dornstauder informed me, a mere month after my arrival that there was an English language radio station in Geneva, I was delighted.  WRG – World Radio Geneva.  All English broadcasting.  I knew now that I would survive my Swiss adventure.

But it was weird.  Every time I turned on the radio, whether it was in the car or at home, it played the same song.  It played You’ve Got A Friend.  You know, the Carole King song, also sung by James Taylor?  Both versions are terrific.  I heard neither.

Someone else was always singing it.

At first I thought it was odd; I mean, the Jackson Five singing You’ve Got A Friend?  Why would anyone want to listen to that?  I heard a different version of the song, every time I turned on the radio.  Roberta Flack sang it, Barry Manilow did a duet with Melissa Manchester, and Barbara Streisand belted it.  Every single time I turned on the radio when I was alone, it happened.

Did you know that song has been recorded by at last count, 752 different artists.  And I use the term “artists” loosely.  I heard each and every one of them.

I started to get spooked.  There was nobody I could talk to about this, other than my husband, who thought I was nuts anyway.  That’s why he married me.  But we were new to town, I didn’t know anyone yet, I had no friends.  Who could I talk to about this unnerving phenomenon?  There was my friend Allison, and a couple of other parents I’d chatted with at Jacob’s school.  But I was not yet comfortable confiding such an eerie experience to strangers.

Finally, I did tell Allison.  I tried to be casual about hearing the song so much, and by so many different artists.  She laughed; she didn’t believe me.  But it was true.  Really it was.  I honestly started to think I must be going, well, slightly, insane.  But if I was, I would be damned if it would be to the generic version.  Give me Carole King – it was her song.  Give me James Taylor – he made it a No. 1 hit.  Michael Jackson, Roberta Flack and the rest?  No.  Not good enough.  And don’t give me Barry Manilow doing anything.

Remember, this happened before you could just look up programming online.  Before you could pause and replay.  Before you could record on your computer just what weird thing you were streaming online.  It was the olden days.  Before Google.  Imagine that.

Allison started teasing me about it.  She wouldn’t even humor me; she thought it couldn’t be happening.  But I got back at her.  Whenever it happened and I was at home, I would call her.  Invariably she wasn’t home, and so I put the phone up to the stereo, and I let her know, well, Allison, “You’ve got a friend.”  No message, just the song.  After she was serenaded by 4 or 5 different versions of the song on her answering machine, Allison finally agreed that, well, maybe they were doing something weird with that song.  We became fast friends.

So today, when we plugged in our new stereo, we tuned it in to our favorite pop station and turned it on.  I heard those first few notes and thought, “Oh no.”

And then I heard it, Carole King singing

When you’re down and troubled
And you need some loving care
And nothing, nothing is going right
Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest night

You just call out my name
And you know wherever I am
I’ll come running to see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there
You’ve got a friend

 It’s good to be back in the States.

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October 25, 2011 · 9:13 am

Merde 101

[I am on vacation.  What follows is my entry into a memoir writing contest.  My 1st prize notification apparently got lost in the mail.]

            Struggling to understand the chatter surrounding me in Geneva’s Cointrin Airport, I cursed in French for not having learned the damn language.  Merde (Shit)!  Fils de pute! (son of a bitch)!  I knew French curse words would come in handy because my family and I had plopped into Francophone Switzerland for a five-year stay.  My husband, John, had taken a job in Geneva.  We all jumped at the adventure. John wanted the professional challenge, I wanted to travel around Europe, and our six-year-old son, Jacob, wanted to ride in a gondola while yodeling.  Fantastic!  So we schlepped all our crap to a place where none of us could speak the language.  To a place where, in fact, they spoke a language I had already flunked twice.  Merde!

           It wasn’t just french classes I messed up.  I also butchered the language while trying to actually communicate my first time in France, too.  Two years after we married, John and I visited our close friend, Fran, who was living in Paris.  John designated me the family French speaker, saying “You took it in college, didn’t you?”  Oh well, I thought, I’ll try.  Did I mention to him that I remembered almost nothing?  Nah.

            Our first morning in Paris, Fran sent us off on our own to see the city while she went to work.  Pointing out the subway, she said, “The Metro’s cheaper if you buy a “‘carnay’ — a book of tickets.”

            We got to the platform, and I practiced my line: “Je voudrais un canard.” “Je voudrais un canard.”

            “Lease, you’re about to ask for a duck,” said John.

            “Oh.”

            We laughed about it later with Fran, at a café near the Centre Pompidou. “It’s a damn good thing I’ll never really need to know French,” I told Fran. Merde!  Those words haunted me for the five years I did need to know it, a decade later.

            Actually, I was really excited about being in Switzerland, traveling around Europe, living a completely new life.  Switzerland is a magical place.  Breathtaking scenery surrounds you wherever you go.  Just looking at the snow capped mountains rising up from behind Lake Geneva made me feel like Julie Andrews – I always wanted to sing.  But full-time French made me want to scream.  It was a major pain in the ass (une douleur importante dans le cul).  I WILL LEARN THIS, I nevertheless promised myself.  THIRD TIME IS THE CHARM, ISN’T IT?   But I also steeled myself to be repeatedly humiliated on an international basis.  It was important, though, that my son didn’t see my embarrassment too often.

            I immediately enrolled in a French class; a mime class would have been more useful.  La Migro, the local grocery store, offered what were considered the best local language classes.  In spite of my history, I fully expected to be fluent in no time; after all my life was a French immersion class.  I started to learn slowly.  I thought I was doing pretty well, in fact.  But after a year of hard work, I flunked the final.  I was devastated.

            This is not the Sorbonne, I thought.  I can’t master grocery store French?  I am living and breathing in French every day.  How could I possibly have flunked?  I can even successfully talk to people on the telephone in French where I cannot mime, and they understand me. 

            Well, they usually understood me.  There was one major exception – giving directions to our house.  Native French-speakers couldn’t follow my simple directions, even though our house was incredibly easy to find.  Repair people had a particularly tough time.  It was humiliating.

            In Switzerland, most major routes are “la Route de Wherever.”  If you are driving on the main route to Geneva, it is called “la Route de Genève.”  Ours was a farm road and it wasn’t on the map.  So to get to our house, I would tell people (in French) to get off the Autoroute at the Nyon exit, turn away from Lake Geneva, and take la Route de Ste. Cergue.  (Ste. Cergue is the town just up the mountain from our house, a popular place for cross-country skiing and hiking.  Everybody in the region knows it.)  I told them to proceed uphill towards the mountains, two miles past the Avia gas station.  Then, on the left (au gauche) there is a line of seven brown Swiss chalets that looks like a cuckoo clock display.  We lived in the first cuckoo clock.  How could anyone miss it?  But French-speakers often just didn’t show up.  I was really starting to hate French.

            A year into our adventure, though, I realized that I had no choice but to learn the damn language.  That’s when we got a puppy (un chiot; un jeune chien), an adorable English Springer Spaniel, Cooper.  Dogs are welcome travelers throughout Europe.  Well behaved dogs, that is.  We wanted to travel, so Cooper needed training.  Merde.  Luckily, I found an obedience class that was held in a field where Cooper and I often walked, just across la Route de Ste. Cergue.  We enrolled.  Naturellement, it was taught in French.

            The first of three classes was great.  Cooper was a star.  I understood what they were saying — Sit!  Stay!  (Asseyez-vous! Restez!)  My French was very good!  (Mon français était très bon !)  Cooper and I sauntered home.

            But we foolishly went back the next week.  The class of about 20 people and 20 chiots was asked to line up for the exercises (ligne pour des exercices).  We were asked to walk forward (de marcher en avant) – “So far, so good, Coops!” I said to the cooperative little guy.  Cooper wagged his tail.

            Then the teacher/drill sergeant stepped up the pace:

            “Tournez à droite!”-- Turn right!  I turned left.  Cooper went straight.

            “Tournez à gauche!” –Turn left!  I was still correcting my incorrect right turn and couldn’t remember which side was “gauche.”  Cooper got confused and wound himself and his leash around my legs.

            “Marchez tout droit”– Walk Straight!  Somehow, I regained my balance and held on to the leash, and then promptly walked into a man whose dog started humping mine.

            “Repetez!”  I didn’t want to.  Cooper sat down and refused to move.

            I could not keep up, and all I could think was “What idiot developed a language where “right” and “straight” are the same goddamn word?”

            The situation did not improve when John and Jacob arrived to cheer me on.  Merde!  I wanted the earth to swallow them both and regurgitate them — safe and unharmed — at a later date and preferably in a place where English was widely spoken.  Just about then I was told in rapid-fire French to:

            “Tenez la laisse à votre tour de taille!”– Hold the leash at your waist.  Hold the leash with my tail?

            “Tirez sur la laisse à l’oreille”– Pull the leash to your ear. Why?  Did I lose an earring?

            “Grattez le chien est de retour.”– Scratch the dog’s back.  Will he scratch mine? 

            “Prenez votre chien bout à bout et pousser vers le bas.” — Grab your dog’s butt and push it down.  Huh?

            “Donner au chiot un régal”– Give the puppy a treat.  I deserve one, too!

            “Ne pas le laisser manger la merde de vache qui est partout sur le terrain” — Do not let him eat the cow poop that is all over the field.   So very glad I signed up for this class.

            And the teacher started again!  It was up, down, left, right, turn, heel, spin around, start again — “Repetez!” until Cooper and I were hopelessly confused about what we were supposed to be doing and why.  I couldn’t remember if “gauche” meant “right” or “left” or what either had to do with its English definition of “tacky.”  I no longer even liked dogs.

            But my husband and son were sitting on the grass, watching.

            Merde.  I cannot let my seven-year-old see me looking like a clown.   Suddenly, I knew exactly what I had to do.

            “Tournez a gauche,” the teacher commanded.  I bowed to Cooper, and then copied what my classmates had done, purposely two beats behind.  Jacob looked confused, so I took it up a notch.  I exaggerated our wrong turns.  I checked my shoe for poop, grimaced, and wiped the pretend poop on a clump of grass.  Jacob giggled.  My classmates moved out of my way.  I wobbled on an imaginary tightrope and tapped Cooper gently on the butt trying to make him wobble, too.  Jacob and John laughed.  I marched with military precision while Cooper did just as he pleased, and I faked shock and dismay.  My guys were laughing with me.  Cooper joined in the ruse by slipping out of his collar, running and jumping onto Jacob, depositing muddy paws and kisses all over him.  Jacob was delighted.  We happily returned home across la route de Ste. Cergue, my secret failure safe.

            And then a miracle happened in the week between the second class and the final class.  A French-speaking electrician found his way to my house using my directions.  Directions I had told him en français.  Better still, he solved the riddle, ‘where do repairmen go when I give them directions?’

            “Cette route est appelée ‘la route Blanche,’” he told me.  “Il n’est pas appelée ‘la Route de Ste. Cergue.’”  This road is called ‘The White Road,’ he said.  It is not called ‘the Road to Ste. Cergue.’”  Even though it damn well is the road to Ste. Cergue and everybody takes it to get there.

            There were no street signs of any kind, no name on the map.  Nothing identified it as la Route Blanche.  It seemed that this was a very new road by Swiss standards, only about 75 years old.  The “old” route, which meandered around quite a bit and started twelve miles away and at a completely different exit, is still called la Route de Ste. Cergue, even though no one has used it to get there since 1927.

            It is not my fault that French-speakers cannot follow my directions,  I realized ecstatically.  I can tell people how to get to my house!  I can do it in French!  They didn’t change the road name when they built the damn road.  They didn’t change the map or put up street signs.  There was no way for me to know!  I am not an idiot!

            Cooper and I went to the third and final class with renewed confidence. We invited John and Jacob to come.  Cooper and I actually did better with the commands thrown at us in rapid-fire French.  Some commands we understood, some we faked, some we hammed up as an encore.

            Cooper earned a diploma in his class.  He got to see a whole lot of Europe.

            I continued with the grocery store French class, sometimes understanding and sometimes faking it.  Within a few months, I passed the course.  I took home a certificate and proudly showed it to John and Jacob.

            “What does it say?” my son asked.

            “It says “Jacob’s mommy is fluent in French!” I told him proudly.  He gave me a kiss and happily headed out the door to play with Cooper.

            John smiled.  “What does it actually say?”

            “I’m not really sure,” I said, smiling.  “It’s in French.”

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October 18, 2011 · 9:35 pm

Life stinks

Here it is, fall.  The beautiful changing colors, the graceful tease of the orange and yellow leaves as they flutter down to the ground.  The cool, comfortable temperatures.  The stink bugs.

Yup, they’re here.  Stink bugs.  Got them?

Two years ago, when my friend Judy and I were having lunch, riding up in an elevator, she first mentioned them to me.  I had never heard of them.  In fact, I thought she was using code to refer to the woman standing in front of us –because the woman reeked of cigarettes to the point where I feared we would be asphyxiated then and there.

But no!  She was referring to real live, invasive species-type insects!  Whodda thunk it.  They are annoying beetles that get into your house and can become quite an expensive pest.

I am actually quite confused about stink bugs.

My husband, John, who knows everything and who more annoyingly is never wrong, insists that they do not stink when you smush them.  John claims that the ones WE get are a special invasive species from Asia that do not stink.

“Why do they call them ‘stink bugs’ then?”  I keep asking.  He never answers.  And he never produces genetic evidence that they are, in fact, Asian.  Disillusion is starting to penetrate my marriage.

My friend Judy is also one of the smartest people I know.  She is far less annoying about it, though.  Besides, she is a much more practical sort of smart.  She assured me that when smushed, stink bugs smell like stinky socks.  She assured me that her son is far away and that her husband, Steve, has delightful feet.  Therefore, to Judy, there is only one place the stinky sock smell can come from.  Smushed bugs.

So I just don’t know who to believe.

Me, I am a very careful person.  As a rule, I am a bit of a life-lover.  I have never actually smushed a stink bug.  Why tempt it?  Actually, though, I try not to smush stuff intentionally.  There is always something else, some other way, something natural you can use to rid the house of pests.

For example, when we lived in France about 10 years ago, we were informed by the animal control squad that the best way to keep certain rodents at bay was for a man to pee in the area where they had taken up residence.

Huh?

Yup.  That’s what French Animal Control told us.  You may not know this, but the French don’t always like Americans.  Sometimes there are clues.

So when my husband was told by guys in uniforms to go up in to our attic and pee into the dark corners, well, we thought twice about it.  John more so than me, I’ll admit.  One of those thoughts, naturally was that the critters we were trying to evict had long, sharp teeth, and were known to be rather aggressive.  They were “fweens,” a type of weasel.  A type of weasel that is not afraid of humans, of the peeing or non-peeing variety.  A type of weasel that is too ferocious to be made into a coat.

So back to the stink bugs.  I think I’ve figured out a compromise.  We catch the stink bugs in toilet paper, throw them into the toilet, John pees on them.   We flush.  Everyone is happy.

And we make the French proud.

Asian Stink Bug -- Courtesy of Google

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