Nick bought shoes this afternoon. Since this process is of absolutely no interest to me, I promptly plopped down on one of the comfy couches, and took to staring intently into space while Nick began talking shoes with the salesman.
After a couple of minutes, though, it was clear that something was wrong. I could hear what Nick was saying, and although it was perfectly good French, I didn’t understand what it meant, which I chalked up to it being about men’s shoes. The odd thing was, though, that the salesman didn’t understand him, either, and men’s shoes are kind of, well, his job. Nick said something else–also perfectly intelligible, although not meaningful to me–and then was obliged to repeat it, pointing in frustration.
When a break in the other shoppers allowed me to see what he was pointing at, I jumped off the couch like a shot and rushed through the crowd to a position just behind Nick. “Boots,” I stage-whispered.
“Boots?” he repeated tentatively.
“Boots!” the salesman cheered, and they were off and running.
When we had a minute, I explained what had gone wrong. “At first, you were asking him for something ‘in wood,’” I told him. “Like, something made of wood, or maybe even the name of a color. Then you asked for ‘a box.’ It’s unclear whether the box was meant to be made of wood, or if they were separate things.”
He scowled at me, and insisted that, if I intended to share that in my blog, I must also include this:
Shortly after starting up the scooter to go home, Nick called out, “Where are my gloves?”
Now, I was a little distracted at the time. As if it weren’t bad enough that I had to hold on for dear life, I was also having unprecedented trouble with my helmet. It felt too loose–every time we moved, inertia would cause it to slide back on my head rather than fitting snugly the way it usually does.
“They were in your helmet at the café,” I muttered, fussing with my inexplicably useless chin strap.
I realized shortly that there was something wrong with what I’d just said; that we usually carry my helmet around while leaving Nick’s in the scooter’s storage space. I craned up to look at the back of the helmet Nick was wearing, to see if we had inadvertently switched somehow.
“That doesn’t make sense, I guess,” I went on, trying to shove my helmet more firmly onto my head. “So they were in my helmet at the restaurant, and then we–”
The penny dropped.
“So–now they’re on my head,” I called out.
We both have a good excuse, though: we’re exhausted because we’ve been running with the puppy. I chug along, complaining mightily, while Nick runs circles around me, alternately chasing Jolie and running away from her.
The French think that we are entirely insane.