Special Secret Accent Classes

Last week, some of our great friends from New York City were visiting us. Now let me tell you something about folks from the Big Apple: they are difficult to impress. This opinion is not to say that our friends themselves are difficult because they are not in the slightest. Nor do I mean to imply through my subjective claim that they ever vocalized any sort of, even marginal, un-impressed state during their visit. They all seemed to love Paris--two had never been here while the other two had been here but had mysteriously walked away from prior visits without feeling wholly taken with this place. Thus, true to my hyper-obsessed with Paris persona, I pushed it on them. Mission accomplished (or so they said--they might have just feared that admitting anything less than adulation would result in another trek following their butter-obsessed leader as she elbowed a path through busy St. Germain to go to the "best bakery ever" only to find out it was closed).

Our friends were ideal visitors in the all-around sense; they spoke some French, they had done extensive research about what they wanted to see and where they wanted to eat, they used the metro with ease, and they showed us new components of this magical city that is forever surprising us. Best of all, they were not shy about having wine with lunch. Who has two thumbs and likes this crowd?

But another thing they did was to make me feel like an idiot.

Of course, the impartation of that emotion was definitely inadvertent. Hello! I did say they were my friends. And it was probably unsuspected too (as in, they might be reading this entry now and thinking, "What the fudgsicle is Maggie talking about?") They just seemed to easily fit into the scene here without encountering any of the SNAFUs and major life obstacles I seem to encounter on a minute-by-minute basis. Three of them had French language skills they had acquired through high school and a few college courses. None were French majors, nor had they even uttered a word in French in the past decade or so--to my knowledge at least (maybe they have been busy conjugating French verbs at work while the rest of their office obsessivley checks Facebook and/or have been joining French chat rooms for years now. But neither came up in conversation, so I have to assume that there was no practicing of the langue francais any time in recent history). Yet, they were confidently dropping (relevant and sensical) phrases, producing gutteral "R"s like it was no one's business, and correctly identifying verb tenses as though it was as natural a thing to be doing as eating a sandwich at noon.

For someone who took French all through college, who lived here as a 21-year-old, and who has struggled through Alliance Francaise classes and sessions with a lovely (if halitosis-afflicted) French tutor, this ease with conversing made me feel tres bete.

Also, as waiters smiled and courted us, people everywhere practically fell over themselves with friendliness, and we sailed through life in France with nary a SNAFU, I was wondering if my friends either thought that I was: A. An overreactive, prevaricator who actually leads a terrifically banal life in super-friendly Paris and thus makes up endless allegations of scowling bakers, menacing waiters, and perpetually paradoxical conditions. Or B. They pitied my idiocy at having so much difficulty acclimatizing to this place. After all, people here make it so darn easy!

Well whatever, I have had issues, and I have no idea if it is me, Parisians, the grey winter, the fact that butter prices increased this past winter, or the "issue" that I insist on wearing my gym clothes to and fro the gym (rather than showing up in full dressy-wear, only to immediately strip it off and sweat for an hour and then subsequently spend TWO more hours in the locker room remaking myself. Heaven forbid people on the street see me in workout clothes. For shame!)

Maybe living in NYC makes you impervious to the struggles inherent with urban living in general. Or maybe people in NYC are so closed off and unfriendly that people in Paris seem just downright loquacious and amenable. Or maybe there were special French accent classes given at schools across New England, and my school cut them in order to have money to build "essential" new squash courts.

Or maybe I just have some especially well-traveled friends who make it work.

I suppose all I really know, the crucial "takeaway" of this important piece of prose here, is as follows: even after 9 months of living here, my accent still bites. And that, my friends, is definitely not impressive.

Or maybe it is impressive, in an inverse sort of way.

In any case, it was awesome to see that saavy band of NYC'ers (if a bit humbling). And we did a bit of traveling too. More on that in the next entry...