With fewer than two months before reentry to our fine republic, the internal debate over the extent to which I miss America, or not, pops up in the most unlikely of places.
Take for example:
Today I was walking through a park in Dijon on my way home at around 1:30pm. France seems to have a problem with both homeless people and grossly (in many definitions) aggressive men. When the two overlap, it sucks. There were some men sitting on a bench, enormous (presumably nearly empty) beers in hand. One of them came up to me and started telling me how beautiful I was. No good ever comes of this. Wait for it………and, voila, he asked me something wildly inappropriate.
Semi cultural problems with this situation:
My friends and I have had long discussions about how to respond to guys who clearly have no mother, sister, aunt, daughter, etc etc. Unfortunately, the one thing that stands in the way of something that hardly counts as retaliation is the possibility that we misunderstood them, that one of the words doesn’t mean what you thinks it means, etc. So that word the guy used today for example (which won’t be added to my vocabulary) always raises that tiny doubt of what he’s really saying. Call it naivety. Call it “I need to grow a pair”. But that .02% chance that I misunderstood this drunk, nasty guy all up in my face kept me from giving him the finger and saying “have a nice day” or just pushing him in the fountain.
In America, I would have had the linguistic assurance to do both of the above and still be pissed that his big splash got my canvas shoes wet. Those things take ages to dry.
40 days.
And, Mom, Happy Mothers’ Day. You’re wonderful. Hope I haven’t brought shame on the family.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment