Tag Archives: france

Ladder of Big Dirty Words

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Posted: March 2, 2015 at 5:45 pm

 

“What makes a word a bad word, dad?” asked eight-year-old Devon. Carol had left La Pistache to take our daughter Sophie to her dance rehearsal, and Devon and I were kicking a soccer ball on the terrasse.

“Words themselves aren’t really bad,” I said. “It’s the context that makes them bad.” I pinned the ball to the ground with my foot.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You have to look at the situation and what the person saying the word means when they say it. Like if you’re in England and you say, ‘give me a fag,’ it means you want a cigarette.”

“I would never ask for a cigarette.” Devon kicked the ball from underneath my foot, and flipped it into the air in one motion of his left foot. He started juggling the ball on the top of his right foot, not letting it hit the ground.

“That’s not the point,” I said. “But if you’re in Canada and use the word ‘fag,’ which I know you would never do, it’s not very nice. Same word, different meaning. You understand what it means?”

“I heard it on the bus. But I wouldn’t say it.”

“That’s good,” I said. Devon kicked the ball through my legs, ran around me and tapped it into the net. When Devon was younger, I would let him do that. Now, I can’t stop him from doing that.

I chickened out explaining to Devon what he wanted to know, why “f*ck” was a bad word. I was less shy explaining this to my French conversation partner Céline that afternoon in Aix-en-Provence. We were speaking English at the ‘Book In Bar’ bookstore and café. We had our regular table in the front section of the store. I told her that Devon was asking about bad words. She put her sirop on the table and turned to face me.

“Okay. So what is this ‘f*ck’ thing I see everywhere?” asked Céline. “I read it everywhere. Why is everyone saying it so much?”

“Ah, well, uh, you know what the verb ‘f*ck’ means, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Okay, so since ‘f*ck’ is related to the act of sex, then using it is a swear word, a bad word.” I saw two or three heads at adjoining tables turn our way.

“That doesn’t make sense. It’s just sex. Why is that bad?”

“You are so French,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “I agree, it’s not bad. But it’s not polite to say in English Canada. When I lived in Québec, you heard ‘f*ck’ on public television at 7:00 p.m. But all swear words in French Canada have nothing to do with sex, but the Catholic Church. If you want to cause a scandal in Québec, say ‘chalice’ to your boss or your grandmother.”

“That’s funny,” said Céline, smiling. “How could a word like ‘chalice’ be bad in Québec?”

“It all has to do with the rejection of organized religion in Québec; it’s a long story,” I said. “But I can tell you that I had my teachers laughing quite hard at my ‘Échelle des Gros Mots Sales.’ ”

“Your Ladder of Big Dirty Words?”

“I was doing a French immersion thing for six weeks in Chicoutimi Québec, and my class made a film for the school’s big concert at the end. My part of the film was teaching the English students how to swear in Québec. I made a cardboard ladder about as tall as me, with ten rungs, and on each rung I printed a swear word, starting with the mildest at the top, and the big one at the bottom – as you used the words while climbing down, increasingly sacrilegious, you descended closer to Hell. The joke was that on the other side of the ladder, the words were printed in reverse order, with the worst at the top. I explained that as you went up the ladder, using increasingly bad words, you improved your swearing. Like a true Québécois.” I pounded my chest with my fist the way I learned in Aix.

“What were the words?”

“Write these down,” I said. “This is the order I came up with, worst first, after talking to the lady I boarded with: câlisse, tabarnak, hestie, criss, viarge, sacrament, calvaire, tabarnouche, tabarslaque and tabarouette.”

Céline furrowed her brow. “I know what some of them mean, but some don’t mean anything in French.”

“Well, they don’t have to make sense. It’s all how they’re used. Strictly speaking, câlisse is the chalice on the alter. Tabarnak is a form of tabernacle, the little house on the alter that holds the chalice. Hestie is a form of hostie, the piece of bread which is Jesus. Criss is Christ. That one works in English. Viarge is the Virgin Mary. Sacrament is also the piece of bread. Calvaire is Calvary, the hill where Jesus died. The last three are milder forms of tabarnak, when tabarnak is a bit too much.”

“That seems crazy to me,” she said.

“Let me ask you this. What’s the worst thing you can say in France, something you would never say to your mother?”

“Putain,” said Céline, quietly, looking over her shoulder.

“That means prostitute. Why is that bad?”

“It just is,” she said. “The confusing part is that it’s okay to say ‘pute,’ which also means prostitute.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” I rolled my eyes. “I can see why you French think you’re so superior in the swearing department.”

Ahmed is Punished

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Posted: February 23, 2015 at 9:00 am

 

A story of punishment from Aix-en-Provence:

At 4:30 p.m. I was parked on the sidewalk, as usual. I watched the parents milling around the school gate, kissing cheeks and dragging on cigarettes. I would have left my car and joined them, but I knew from experience that crowd didn’t want to chitchat with anyone they hadn’t known since kindergarden. The bell rang and a few minutes later the wire gate swung open. Madame Aubin stood at the gate, saying goodbye to each child as they passed her, touching most of them affectionately on the arm or shoulder. She looked like she had already dressed for that night’s hot date. With a father’s laser focus, I zeroed in on Sophie’s face among the crowd, as if everyone else was in black and white and she was in Technicolor. She caught my eye and broke into a radiant smile.

Sophie got into the backseat with Devon. Without saying hello Sophie said, “I’ve got a new story for you today, dad. Obviously, it’s about Ahmed.”

Each day after school, Sophie had a story about her classmate Ahmed. He was a troubled, 11-year-old bully, thirsting for attention. The son of Algerian immigrants, he had several strikes against him: he bordered on obesity, caused classroom havoc to divert attention from his dimwittedness, and came from a culture not embraced by mainstream France. With hooded eyes, a thick shock of hair in a demi-Mohawk, shirttails untuckable, Ahmed shuffled around the schoolyard looking for younger children to abuse. He looked like a kid who would intentionally step on a crack to break his mother’s back.

“So we were in class and Titi was bored and looking for some entertainment,” said Sophie. Titi (Timothée) was Ahmed’s undersized toady. I eased the car down Chemin du Four, and by coincidence I could see Ahmed’s mohawk bobbing above the heads of his flunkies walking to the bus stop.

“So Titi whispered, ‘Hey Ahmed, I’m dying. Do something, OK?’ Ahmed got ready by taking big gulps of air, and waited for Madame to pause her lesson.”

I knew what was coming next, as this was not the first time I heard of Ahmed’s prodigious skills. Calculating the time of maximum disruption, he sometimes unleashed a deep and malodorous, Olympian burp to bring the class to hysterics.

“So he let out this enormous burp, but it was really weird because normally Madame would scream at him. But she didn’t this time.”

I knew that the established procedure, from the French teachers’ handbook, was: (1) scream at the child, (2) belittle the child to the maximum extent possible, and (3) banish the child to another classroom. This was a quotidian punishment for Ahmed, upon whom such embarrassment had a diminishing effect.

“Dad, can we stop at Banette?” I made a right turn from the left lane onto Fontenaille and parked the front half of the car on the sidewalk, the back half remaining in the street. I gave Sophie two euros, and the children were soon back in the car with a pain au chocolate and a ficelle.

“Where was I?” Sophie asked. “Oh, yeah, Madame was acting weird. She just looked at Ahmed in a really cold way and everyone was quiet. She didn’t move a muscle on her face and walked slowly to Ahmed’s desk. She got close to him, really close, so her nose was about an inch away from his nose. That was gross because he kind of smells. Then in a quiet voice, kind of whispering, she said, ‘Hey, look, the door’s open.’ Then she paused a bit, and then shouted, ‘GET OUT!!!’ Then Madame chose me to take Ahmed from the room.”

It was Sophie’s job to find another class, explain to the teacher that Ahmed was being punished, and request he be allowed to sit at the back of the classroom, staring at the wall for the day.

“It sounds like you should have taken Ahmed straight to the psychologist,” I said. I wheeled the Peugeot into traffic and headed home. “You know what a psychologist is, don’t you?”

“I think so. But tell me.”

“It’s someone who helps people with their emotional and mental health,” I said.

“Do I need a psychologist?” asked Devon.

“I don’t know. Why do you ask, Dev?”

“Well, you just said Ahmed should go see a psychologist and some of the kids have to see a psychologist during school.”

“That’s okay, maybe they’re having some trouble in class.”

“Yeah, the teachers keep screaming at them,” said Devon.

“Do you know how to say ‘psychologist’ in French?” I asked.

“I forget.”

“It’s pronounced ‘puh-seek-o-log.’ That makes me laugh every time.”

“You’re a ‘puh-seeko,’ ” said Devon.

“Oh, nice one.” I turned onto Repentence to make the long climb on the narrow, curved road, knowing I would lose the inevitable game of chicken with a city bus.

“Anyway,” said Sophie, “can we get back to my story? So I first tried Madame Lamont’s class, which I knew was a mistake when I saw Madame Lamont’s crazy look.

‘Not you again!’ she screamed at Ahmed. ‘You’ve destroyed your own class, and now you expect to join my class again and annoy us too? Don’t you dare come in here!’ All the kids in Madame Lamont’s class jumped from their seats to get a better look at what was happening.”

“We did too,” said Devon. “In our class we could hear her screaming from way down the hall, so everyone got up and tried to look out the door.”

Previous Ahmed stories had taught me that while leaving your seat was usually forbidden, an unwritten school rule allowed every student the equal opportunity to see someone else get in trouble. No one should be deprived a ring side seat. The ‘equality’ portion of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’

“I had to walk Ahmed back to our class,” said Sophie.

“Were you holding hands?” I asked, passing the “you are now leaving Aix” sign.

“Ewwwww, dad. Stop it. So Madame asked me to try Madame Tremblay. Madame Tremblay knows Ahmed really well. It was like she already had her speech ready. Before I could say anything, Madame Tremblay poked her finger in Ahmed’s chest and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘I see you in the schoolyard walking, so cool with your friends. Right now you have the time to smarten up but when you’re a grownup, you don’t. So if you don’t smarten up now, you’re not going to get married, you’re not going to have kids, and you’re going to end up living on the street. I won’t waste my time on you.’

I told this to Madame and Madame made me go see the substitute teacher, Madame Leclaire, who asked me who this boy was and why did he want to sit in her class.

I said, ‘This is Ahmed, and he is always being punished. He has already been rejected by three other teachers today.’ So of course Madame Leclaire said no and we had to come back to our class and see Madame. Madame did this really big sigh and told me to go see Madame Barizeau. Madame Barizeau had to accept Ahmed because she was the last available teacher. I went back to our classroom really happy.”

“Happy and Ahmed-less,” I said. While Sophie roamed the halls for 30 minutes trying to secure refugee status for Ahmed, her class sat patiently, doing nothing. It was widely accepted that all educational activities would stop while a misbehaving student was re-assigned to another teacher, regardless of the time elapsed; it wouldn’t be fair to the student chaperone, the good kid, to miss out on any instruction. I slowed the car, took a deep breath, and raced up the four switchbacks leading to La Pistache. I wanted to see how fast I could do it this time.

Nickipedia’s Cellar

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Posted: January 18, 2015 at 8:13 pm

 

“Another amazing dinner at La Pistache,” said Pixie, the gentle half of the Corey and Pixie roadshow, married friends visiting from Ottawa. We were in Aix-en-Provence at the metal dining table on the terrasse, on a warm, magical night. The dishes from Carol’s soupe au pistou and tartiflette had been cleared, but the table was cluttered with slabs of cheese and bowls of olives and baguette crumbs and many glasses. Only two months into my adventure, (more accurately, escape), I felt at that moment complete and all-consuming contentment. It was the perfect combination for me: great food and wine, good friends, excellent wife, beautiful setting, and the knowledge that I wouldn’t pretend to be a lawyer for at least nine more months.

“Yeah, that was awesome Carol,” I said, popping an olive in my mouth. “Like it always is. There’s just one thing wrong with this dinner.”

“You’re so predictable, Billy,” said Carol. “You’re going to say we need more wine.”

“Right you are, babe. Let me get another bottle from our wine cellar.”

When I returned with a red Bandol, Pixie asked, “Do you really have a big wine cellar here? I’d love to see it.”

“I was joking,” I said. “The wine cellar is just a shelf in our kitchen, and I can’t seem to keep it filled. I restock once a week. But I told you about Nickipedia’s cellar didn’t I?”

“You told us about his whorehouse,” said Corey.

Nickipedia’s Paris office was at the bottom of what I called the whorehouse building. He entered a key into a small grey box mounted on the pockmarked stone façade. The graffitied, horizontal metal panels of the garage-like door disappeared with a motorized whine above a glass entrance. The office was a jumble of computers and desks and postcards and maps and guidebooks and dictionaries and bike parts and luggage. A framed poster showed a 19th century dandy riding a pennyfarthing, a bike where the front wheel is five times larger than the back. On a whiteboard were written dates and schedules and to-do lists. Bungee cords hung from the walls everywhere. It was a cramped, cluttered office, and nothing special except for the ancient stone walls.

“Since he owned the ground floor office of his building,” I said, “he also owned everything beneath it. His basement served two crucial purposes: storing the company’s bicycles and housing Nickipedia’s wine cellar. He took me down these steep, stone steps. Narrow. And all the steps had concave middles, worn from hundreds of years of feet.”

“Hundreds?” asked Pixie. She cocked an eyebrow and tore a tranche from a baguette.

“Hundreds. Listen. Anyway, the cellar was long and thin, and it held about a thousand bikes.”

“A thousand?”

“You know what I mean, Pixie. Lots.” I poured her another glass of wine, sloshing some on the table. “Oooops. Anyway, think of a skinny stone room with a curved ceiling. The bikes were hung by their front wheels, vertically on each side, leaving only a narrow path to walk down the middle. All the bikes were squished together – it was a mass of intertwined handlebars and wheels. We squeezed through the dangling bike curtains to the end of the room, where Nickipedia showed me his naturally climate-controlled wine cellar; it was a series of cubby holes cut right into the rock wall. Many of the bottles were so thick with dust that their labels were unreadable. If they had labels.”

“I’ve seen it, and it’s perfect,” said Carol. She stood up and starting clearing some dishes. “Even in the summer the rock is cool and the wine stays the right temperature. You can always trust Nickipedia to look after his wine.”

“The weird thing about the cellar,” I said, “besides its old age, was its high, arched ceiling. Interlocking stone. It didn’t seem cellar-like, unlike any other cellar I have ever seen in France. Nickipedia read my mind and said, ‘It wasn’t designed as a cellar. I own this little part, but this is only part of a tunnel. A series of tunnels, actually. See that bricked over part of the wall there?’

I saw a stone archway on one wall, with the same curved top as the cellar’s ceiling. The old stone framed what would have been another tunnel meeting Nickipedia’s tunnel at a right angle. It was sealed off by newer bricks.

‘So I did some research at the archives,’ said Nickipedia, ‘and I discovered that this tunnel was part of a secret underground escape route. It lead from the Île de la Cité to the outskirts of Paris, so the royalty could escape in times of insurrection. The ceiling is high enough for the king to ride through on his horse.’

I smugly reminded Nickipedia, who reportedly knew everything, that the kings lived at Versaille, not downtown Paris.

So Nickipedia said, ‘Not a thousand years ago they didn’t.’

I looked at Nickipedia and said, ‘You’re telling me that you bought a tiny office and now you own a 1000-year-old tunnel?’

Nickipedia smiled and said, ‘This basement is older than Nôtre Dame cathedral. Pretty cool, huh?’ ”

I looked over at Corey, who was watching me with intensity. “I want a 1000-year-old cellar too, Will,” he said. “I so want that.”

“You may have to relocate from Ottawa,” I said.