Les blagues

Before coming to Paris, I was worried that my lack of conversational French skills would impede me from getting to know people and making friends. Sure, I could analyze a work of literature, but how could I let people know the “real me” by talking about symbolist poetry? Or am I really only what I know about Mallarmé? I had an existential crisis on my hands, but had no way of talking about that in French, either.

Luckily, I shouldn’t have worried; there are lots of ways to communicate your personality through conversation in France (hint: speak English). What’s more, I think my personality is changing and adapting to its new environment – most notably, my sense of humor has transformed.

A few days ago, as I was riding the metro toward La Défense, a group of three eleven-year-old-ish boys ran on the train at Concorde. They pushed passed the other passengers to grab prime territory: a group of four seats, miraculously all recently vacated by ex-passengers of the crowded train. A minute later, as the blaring discordant minor-second alarm signaled the closing of the doors, another boy joined them.

“Hey, where were you? We thought we were going to leave without you,” his friends teased.

“J’ai laissé les gens passer,” he smirked. “I was letting people get off.” The implied “unlike you, heathens” was evident in his delivery.

“Ha ha!” I thought. I liked this kid’s style. Making fun of one’s friends is my game. I began active eavesdropping on the boys’ conversation, which now revolved around looking at pictures on a digital camera.

“Is that your sister that you told us about?” one boy asked my favorite one, who looked out the window, too cool to be there.

“Non, c’est ma meuf,” he said, poker-faced. “That’s my woman.”

“Ha ha!” I thought, happy I recognized the slang. This kid should be discovered! He should have a stand-up act! He should host SNL! He should have a spot on The Tonight Show! I ran out of things people do when they are famous comedians, so I returned to eavesdropping. Unfortunately, the boys were getting ready to depart.

“Charles de Gaulle – Étoile.” The recorded female voice routinely announced the upcoming stop in her perfect, mannered French.

“Charles de Gaulle – Étoile,” the comic genius repeated, imitating the same lilts and pauses that made the recorded voice sound so stilted.

“Ha ha!” I thought. I did that all the time, to practice my French (who knows when someone might want to know your favorite métro stop?). Now I couldn’t help but say it in the same way that I had heard so many times. How witty of this little kid to pick up on that!

Then I realized: calling your sister your wife? Not exactly Sedaris. These things weren’t funny. In French, I just have the sense of humor of a ten-year-old.

My boyfriend first pointed out that perhaps my differential perception of the two languages, English and French, is reflected in my reactions to them. For some reason, I find the sales pitches of the homeless on the subway at home tiresome, yet in Paris they are beautiful, lyrical, and with a sense of meter that rivals Shakespeare. It’s hard not to give a few centimes for a piece of poetry like that. Isaac, however, was skeptical.

“Are you sure you don’t just like it because, you know, you can understand it? And you’re excited about your ability to understand the language?”

I still believe that, whether it be the natural cadences of the language or the innate poetic talent of the Parisians SDF (sans domicile fixe), these propositions are different somehow. But as far as jokes are concerned, his theory holds up. Humor that I can understand becomes hilarious. These things are usually infantile. At family brunch, my host mother brought out her specialty: le gâteau nantais, or rum cake. Martine’s son-in-law grinned, “Ah, mon ami, le gâteau nantais.”

“Ha ha!” I said. His friend, the cake! Get it? Because he likes it so much! It's like a friend! His wife glared at me. My outpouring of mirth was too much for such a stupid comment. I now think she believes that I was trying to seduce him, sexy exchange student that I am. Au contraire. I just love a good joke.

You’d think, given these facts, that I would find comfort in the nadir of childish humor: bathroom stall graffiti. Awkward sexual jokes, scrawled phone numbers – things my French self would find a laugh riot. And yet, in the comfort of the co-ed sixth-floor bathroom of Paris-III, my university, I was rudely awakened. Beneath a drawing of a sad, emo stick-figure was written the following dialogue, between various temporary inhabitants of the second-to-last stall:

“Pk’il est triste?” (Why is he sad?)

“Pk’il aime mais il n’ose pas lui dire.” (Because he loves but doesn’t dare tell her.)

Another response: “Pk’il est vivant.” (Because he is alive.)

Oh god, this was getting heavy. I moved on.

“J’ai rompu avec qqn qui j’aime.” (I broke up with someone I love.)

“T’as raison, s’il ne reconnaît pas ton valeur.” (You were right, if he doesn’t realize your worth.)

“Synonyme : connard” (Synonym: bastard)

This was all too metaphysical for the bathroom wall. The innate sorrow of being? Acknowledging man’s intrinsic worth?

“Ha ha!” I thought. “They wrote, ‘bastard.’”

Les surgélés

While wandering around Passy – a neighborhood that houses one of the only shopping malls I’ve seen in Paris, people rich enough to afford a view of the Eiffel Tower from across the Seine, and, in the 19^th century, Balzac – I got hungry. As this is a common occurrence, I weighed the options available to me at the inconvenient hour of 3 in the afternoon.

Cafés were open, but Passy is expensive, and I didn’t want to take the time to sit down when I just wanted a snack. Boulangeries were everywhere, but I had eaten a loaf of bread, plain, for lunch and, while it was very satisfying at the time, the concept was getting a little stale (rimshot).

I wanted a big grocery store – somewhere where I could spend an hour just looking at the different types of breakfast biscuits. This is an easy undertaking at a place like Monoprix, where the three breakfast aisles are filled with one-euro boxes of cookies cleverly concealed as breakfast fare; they are the European equivalent of the muffin, cake’s breakfast cousin. Between semesters in Paris, my friend returned home to the U.S. for Christmas, returning with a box of chocolate chip cookies, a rarity in Paris, for her host family. “Great!” her mere d’accueil exclaimed. “We can share them tomorrow morning!”

But the area seemed too chic for big grocery chains. I tried to retrace the steps of shoppers with plastic grocery bags, until I arrived at the source: a store whose tell-tale florescent lighting outed it as a cheap food emporium. I had never heard of it, though; its lone sign pictured a snowflake and proclaimed that it was called “Picard.” I made Star Trek: Next Generation jokes in my head, because that’s the kind of girl I am.

But as I stepped through the door, I realized they were disturbingly on target. Instead of being greeted by chocolate Easter rabbits in florescent cellophane or cartons of semi-fresh fruit, as at a typical grocery, I found rows of people, staring down into rectangular, glass-covered metal boxes radiating light. There was no music – only the hum of lights and generators in synchrony. Shoppers’ faces were illuminated from below, in that terrifying way that kids with flashlights on camping trips have taken advantage of for decades.

There was nothing else in the store but those freezers: rows upon rows of them, all containing frozen components of a meal. There was the soups aisle, the salad aisle (ew); there were the main courses, the desserts. And all around, people shopping wordlessly for their prepackaged, frozen meals.

After checking out frozen pizza and madeleine prices, I left quickly. As I did, a man stationed at the door wished me a good day, like a Walmart greeter in a parallel and backwards universe.

Les paroles

The first words I learned in my sixth-grade French class were the names of different types of food, specifically possible orders at fast food restaurants. Our professor even brought out fast food menus he brought back from France, which he then laminated before giving to us. We gathered solemnly around the menu for Quick, the poor man’s MacDo (McDonalds’ is surprisingly well-received in France, as well as surprisingly expensive), diligently memorizing the vocabulary: les pommes frites, un Coca, un hamburger. Our next subject was café fare. We listened to songs about ingredients to bring on a picnic. We had a field trip to order croissants from a French bakery, impressing the owners with our food savoir-faire.

Unsurprisingly, I neglected to learn the vocabulary for anything else besides pains au chocolat. While this wouldn’t be a problem if I lived alone in Paris, where my activities primarily consist of ordering bread and asking people at museums if students get in free, as I live with a family, I occasionally have to communicate with people on subjects besides what I ate that day. This is why I need Marcus.

Marcus, the grandson of my host mother, comes over every Friday, and I am obsessed with him. He is energetic. He is hilarious. He is extremely cute. He is ten months old, and is teaching me French.

Martine, my host mother, and I gather around Marcus, who is seated on a blanket depicting various animals.

“Ça?” he asks, pointing at a fish.

“That’s a fish,” I respond. “Un poisson.”

“Ça?”

“Also a fish.”

“Ça?”

“That’s a lion. Un lion.”

“Ça?”

“That’s a … um …” I have no idea what a whale is. I look at Martine.

“Ça c’est une baleine,” she responds. I make a mental note. Baleine = whale.

So far I have learned 50 or so words this way. Tail. Sleeve. Every animal imaginable. There is no baby-talk, which is just the way I like it. “That’s a painting, Marcus,” Martine will say. “It depicts a Chinese village next to the ocean. You are looking very cute today. What are you doing? Please do not scrape that against the wall; it will make me very angry. Thank you very much for stopping what you were doing.”

I’m convinced that this treatment of children is one of the reasons that, in French literature class, my peers give oral presentations referencing Kant, Hegel, and Descartes rather than talking about silly things like “themes.” Rather than reveling over the appearance of a metaphor, as lit majors do so frequently (“I really love how Yeats uses the image of eyes to depict the concept of his memory – did you all get that?”), they pepper their presentations with references to Hegel, sensualist philosophy, and the mock-heroic like my friends drop obscure band names.

It’s a different way of learning about words – more holistic, rather than excavatory – that I first experienced in a sophomore year French lit class taught by a visiting French professor, who seemed puzzled by our methods. “Don’t you see how he uses the rhythm of the sentences to mirror the movement of the carriage across the town’s cobblestone streets? It’s the highest expression of the sensualists! It’s positively John Locke!” We stopped midway through our rapture over Flaubert’s magnificent simile between Charles Bovary and a cow, ashamed.

For someone so purportedly interested in words, I am embarrassed to admit how new these ideas seemed to me. In fact, listening to a recent broadcast of Malcolm Gladwell (www.thisamericanlife.org), I was surprised at how little I think about their exact meanings. While working at The Washington Post, Gladwell and a coworker had a contest to see how many times they could work the phrase “perverse and often baffling” into their copy. When his coworker used it to describe mollusks, his editor noted that mollusks, while potentially perverse, were either baffling or they were not; they did not oscillate between baffling and not baffling. It struck me – often I just write words because they sound good, and not for any actual meaning behind them. Maybe it’s the musician in me. Then again, shouldn’t I be better at poetry?

In any event, as my interactions with Marcus indicate, maybe I should just stick to learning individual words, before I start putting them together. A few weeks ago, alone in the apartment, I heard a key in the lock. In walked a woman I had never seen. “Hello,” she said, “I am la guardienne.” The guardian? Of what? I felt like I was in a J.R.R.Tolkien book. Turns out, it means the housekeeper.

I feel like it will be a while before I’m discussing Kant.

Le métro

A week ago, my mom sent me an email checking up on how things were going, and telling me the dates of her visit to Paris. In closing, she asked, “Which do you like better: NYC or Paris? XOXOXO, Maman”

I never responded to that question, because it seemed impossible, given the completely different contexts in which I lived in each city. I saw New York in the summer, lived with people I knew, had a clear work schedule, and came home to Top Chef every week. In Paris, it’s winter, I live with a stranger, I’m adjusting to cultural and linguistic differences, and try to see a new museum every day. New York was comfortable; Paris is mind-blowing, in both positive and negative ways.

However, there’s one aspect of the two cities where Paris is the incontestable winner: public transport.

A typical morning in New York: I wake up too late to take a shower, so I put my hair in a ponytail and cover it as much as I can with a headband. I put on something that to me resembles something Cool People in New York might wear, grab a clementine from the refrigerator, and speed-walk three blocks to the subway while eating it.

Inevitably, as I approach the station, my train is at the platform; I attempt to get my MetroCard out, go through the turnstile and down the stairs in the 30 seconds the doors are open, all at a sprint while shoving people out of my way. Sometimes I manage to stick my arm in the closing doors (injuries be damned – this is the subway) and pry them open with all the force I can muster. But more often than not, the doors are slammed in my face, and I begin the wait.

It doesn’t matter that it is rush hour; the wait for the second train is interminable. I sing a Mika song in my head. I eavesdrop on the man next to me before realizing he is speaking Swahili. I think about throwing my house keys on the tracks, just to see what would happen. One particularly miserable night in Greenpoint, after waiting 45 minutes for the train, I began creating my own Sudoku, which I then solved. I also wrote a Petrarchan sonnet about … how boring waiting for the subway is. As last, when the train finally arrives, there are no seats, I am standing next to a woman who insists upon touching my hand with hers on the handhold-thing, and I realize that, as I do not own a pair of purple sparkly leggings, my outfit will never be cool enough for New York.

In Paris, the first part hasn’t changed. Ponytailed and hungry, I begin the walk to the métro. I speed-walk into the station, carte orange in hand. And then … my train is there. Or, if not, a sign informs me that it will be there in 1-5 minutes. I have never had to wait more than 5 minutes for a train, including in the suburbs and late at night. This makes everything more civilized: no running, no possible dismemberment. If you miss the train, tant pis. Just listen to the accordion player play the Amélie soundtrack until the next one comes.

The signs announcing train times is ingenious, and I don’t understand why they haven’t been implemented in every city with a subway system. In Psychology 110, Paul Bloom explained a study about anticipation: two groups of subjects were given shock treatments, in which one group received repetitive shocks at equal intervals of time and the other received less painful shocks at irregular intervals. In the end, the subjects who claimed to feel less pain were those who could predict when the shocks would arrive, despite the fact that they were actually more painful than those given to the other group. Lesson: events are less painful when they can be anticipated. This is infinitely truer for trains. New York: GET UP ON YOUR PSYCHOLOGY.

After I board, the routine is the same: no seats, disappointing clothing. Paris has even made explicit a rule that is only tacit in New York, which our exchange program director explained to us on our first day. “Ne souriez pas. Don’t smile,” she said. “Only crazy people smile.” It’s a rule I attempt to follow, in order to seem authentic. But sometimes, after stepping joyfully onto my promptly-arriving train, I just can’t help it.

Les tapis

Every time I walk home from the métro station, I pass an Oriental rug store that has giant panthers carved out of stone in its display window rather than, say, rugs. Upon closer inspection, I found that these panthers sat throughout the store. I deduced that this could be for one of two reasons:

1) People prefer to buy rugs at stores with large black stone panthers.

2) People like to buy the panthers.

However, personally I:

1) Feel no urge to buy a rug upon viewing said panthers.

2) Have no desire to buy a panther.

I will be thinking about this for a long time.

La politesse

Upon entering any establishment small enough for the owner to recognize your presence, French politesse mandates that you greet the owner. This also applies in cases when you see someone you know, see someone you don’t know, interact with anyone in any form, or make eye contact (consequently, eye contact is strictly avoided whenever possible).

At least the greeting is simple enough, right? Wrong.

In the morning, say “Bonjour.” In the evening, say “Bonsoir.” In the afternoon, do not say “Bon après-midi.” It’s just not done. If addressing a man, add “Monsieur,” and a woman, “Madame.” Unless she’s a young woman, when it’s “Mademoiselle.”

But what time is officially evening? And when is a woman no longer young enough to be a mademoiselle? This system practically requires constant embarrassment and potential offensiveness. While buying a dress at H&M, I greeted the cashier with a hearty “Bonsoir.” The customer approaching the counter next to me paused, puzzled, for a moment, then greeted his respective cashier with a emphatic “Bonjour.” What? I looked outside; it was still light out, but definitely past 5 pm. So why was I being put in my place?

I asked some French acquaintances about the rules for this ritual, and they laughed. “At 5:59 exactly. That’s when you change.” They broke into fits of giggles. Unhelpful.

Still, the age distinction is more problematic; rather than just appearing gauche and uncultured, it’s possible you could commit a serious offense. It’s like the time Dan Adler, attempting to order at Yorkside, called the waitress over with a respectful “ma’am.” She veered around, glared, and responded, “I am twenty-three. Never call me that again.” He never did.

I thought the reaction was a little reactionary at the time; I’m still at the age where birthdays are a time for public celebration and when urgings to “enjoy the best years of your life” are frequent. Yet I felt similarly last week. As I was sitting in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, attempting to parse Braques’ cubes into the grapes, pipe, and newspaper listed in the title, a crowd of schoolboys ran boisterously across my line of vision; suddenly, one of them turned back around, approached me tentatively and said, “Pardon Madame, désolé de vous déranger." Rather than remarking his sweet apology, one which never would have occurred by some kid at home, I was struck by his greeting. Was I really Madame-worthy? When had I passed by the times of mademoiselle, first loves, and blaming mistakes on youthful experimentation?

That afternoon on my way home, craving cherries, I lingered at a fruit stand long enough to be approached by the turbaned vendor, who encouraged me to try the cherries, bizarrely touting the fact they were imported. “They’re from Australia,” he said. “And you, where are you from?” I, the clearly-imported Parisian, explained my origins, and he laughed. “Tu a voté pour Hillary?” he asked, obsessed (as many French are) with the American primaries. We talked about our preferences for Obama, and laughed about Bush’s gaucheries.

“So,” I said, not wanting to waste his time, “how much are the cherries?” “Well, let’s see.” He took his time putting a carton on the scale: 0.7 kilos. “20 euro a pound, but for you, this will be 10 euro.” I made an apologetic face. “It’s too expensive; I’m really sorry.”

The vendor looked perplexed. “Mais Mademoiselle,” he said, insulted, “vous n’êtes pas obligée.” “There’s no obligation.”

And again, rather than notice the eccentricities of a world in which a businessman would rather converse than make a sale, I thought to myself, “Mademoiselle. Yes.”

Le repas

This afternoon, my host mother called me à table for a lunch of a green salad, baguette, quiche, yogurt, fruit salad. We discussed the obesity epidemic that is now crossing the Atlantic and making itself known in France, referencing the corporate subsidies that made sugary and fatty foods so cheap and available in the United States that do not exist here. I began to talk about the evolutionary reasons for our fatness, or as much as I could do in French.

“Well, it’s partly because, um, a long time ago, like, evolutionarily … we needed sugars and fats the most, because they gave us the most energy …”

“Also because they taste good!” she interjected.

“Well, yes, but … they taste good because … um … we needed to eat them … so we’re …” I paused to think of the word for ‘adapt,’ wondered if it was ‘adapté,’ wondered if saying ‘adapté’ was going to sound too American, then decided to abort the discussion. “Anyway, I really love chocolate,” I concluded.

We returned our trays to the kitchen, where I began loading the dishes into the dishwasher, and asked how her upcoming bridge tournament was organized. Apparently this was a sore point.

“The organizer, I’ve asked him nicely and not so nicely, but he always puts me in the first round and the last round, instead of two rounds together, so my whole day is devoted to bridge. If everyone had to do it, that would be fine, but it’s always me, and I have other things in my life, you know?”

“Ce n’est pas égal,” I said. “That’s not fair.”

“Si, c’est pas équitable,” she said. “It’s not fair,” with better grammar. “But he tells me I should do it because I’m all alone, and what else do I have to do?”

She went on, laughing at how the organizer liked her, but she was not at all interested in him, pas de tout. She paused.

“You know,” she said, “Je suis contente que tu es ici.” “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too! CUPA gave me a housing survey yesterday, and I didn’t have any … um …” I searched for the word for ‘complaints.’

“Critiques?” she said. “Me neither.”

I excused myself to pack my bag for the afternoon ahead, but instead sat on my bed, completely choked up. I heard her leave for the competition, and knew I was alone - but somehow, I wasn't really.