Au Homard looking for the scissor aisle

Last week I went to France. (and I am still rather jetlagged, which I will use as an excuse for my horrible punctuation, or lack of storytelling abilities) I went with my sister, who is eight years younger than myself . . . and my polar opposite. I am right-brained and random, she is left brained and organized. The last time we spent long amounts of time together, she was ten and I was awful. I think I may be less awful now, being not eighteen, however, within three days I almost smacked her on the back of the head with my (closed) umbrella.

We were in the country of her choice, even though neither of us speaks any French, because it was somehow more interesting than London and she had already been to Germany. Oh, and Europe was cheaper than NYC which is where we were supposed to go in the first place.

We spent a week using gestures and facial expressions, partially because we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves (I know, muppet hair didn't help, duh) and partially because when you heard other Americans on the Metro . . . well . . . they sounded really dumb. When you spend some time with a quiet, mumbly language with no hard sounds -- the words "like" and "yeah" really stick out. And there was the whole being so annoying to each other that one had the desire to do some umbrella smacking, but that was really only once a day. So we put in our headphones and pointed a lot. It turns out most people just thought we were Dutch.

My sister and I come from a family that enjoys . . . well, I suppose it would be called researching the ordinary? We go to the local grocery stores on trips, just to see what is different. Going to the French version of Lowe's (because the museum isn't open yet) and envying the wallpaper (they have such good textures, with all the old plaster to cover up) while confused French people wonder why the Dutch tourists are gesticulating in the paint section . . . it's what my family does.

The French seem to have three important food sections in the Monoprix (like Target with food) -- yogurt, things with made chocolate, and spreadable meats. Each of these had a whole aisle, both sides. Of course, I was basically illiterate for a week so I ate lots of yogurt with interesting surprises. The best was the yogurt with brown sugar syrup on the bottom. The worst, well, I think some of the spreadable meat had gotten mixed in.

We avoided the spreadable meat aisle entirely. The things with chocolate aisle had surprising variety . . . bread with chocolate, rolls with chocolate, croissants with chocolate, Special K with chocolate (thus defeating American Special K logic) . . . chocolate with chocolate. The American section was small and off near the cleaning solutions, with a sign bearing "Tex Mex" and shelves of taco shells and peanut butter.

The most horrible food accident because of illiteracy happened in a very expensive shee-shee restaurant "George" which is on the top of the Centre Georges Pompidou. It’s known for it’s high design and snotty servers. We sat down in our "designed" chairs with our specially printed menus on translucent paper and squinted at the type, not wanting to get out the book and look like tourists. Tomato salad is easy to order . . . M order haricot verts, which we were familiar with . . . but then I found "Macaroni au Homard". I thought this was fancy-shmancy macaroni and cheese. I then thought "yum" and ordered it. The waiter, having figured out immediately that we were not French, or Dutch, said, in English, "ahhh, lobster macaroni". This would have been even better than fancy-shmancy macaroni and cheese, if I liked lobster . . . which I don’t AT ALL. But to change my order would be to admit that I was illiterate. So I bit on my lobster claw and chewed and even swallowed. And didn’t even die. M insists that she knew, because even in France "macaroni and cheese doesn’t cost 29 Euro". I thought it was just really good cheese.