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I just returned from a couple of weeks in Lourmarin, France. After trying to express myself through pantomime and Google Translate, I was reminded of my first experience trying to communicate in France. 2006. A restaurant in St. Omer, France. It is below. Thanks – I mean Merci – for reading about the experience.
What is This? What eez Thees? Quien es?
The scene was out of a Steve Martin movie. Here I was, a guy from Poulsbo, Washington, in an Irish golf shirt, in a restaurant in St. Omer, France, reading (more accurately staring at, hoping to suddenly decipher a new language) a menu written entirely in French.
No English subtitles.
The waitress kept looking over at our table. Either she was wondering if we were ready to order, or, perhaps, wondering why I was fidgeting and sweating so much while reading a menu.
I was uncomfortable. What if I mispronounced these very foreign words and, by mistake, said, “Please bring me an old shoe as an appetizer,” or “Slap me whenever you want,” or “Is your mother a goat?”
Taking the safe route, I pointed when it was time to order. Gazpacho was cold soup, I knew. Not what I really wanted, but better than a slap or old shoe.
Next, I pointed to “kebob,” though suddenly wondering if French kebobs included footwear. My ordering was completed, and I relaxed, sipped on a glass of terrific French wine, and waited. Very soon the waitress returned with a cracker covered with cream cheese and a shot glass filled with a very small egg in a gelatinous substance that could have been hard or really-old Jell-O.
Apparently, the well-trained waitress knew to return to any table where a middle-aged man sat whose eyes were bigger than pie plates.
“What is this?” I asked as nicely as I could. She returned my gaze with one of equal confusion. Clearly, she spoke as much English as I did French. We had a communication gap. I had a gelatinous covered egg in a shot glass in front of me. It was an awkward, silent moment to say the least.
The mind is a funny thing. Mine immediately created two plans, one which was sure to get my query answered. First, I tried to ask, “What is this?” with what I thought was a near perfect French accent: “What eez thees?” No luck. Now two people had saucer-sized eyes, me and the waitress.
Plan B. Speak Spanish. My logic was something like this. French is a foreign language I can’t speak. English is a foreign language she can’t speak. I took two years of Spanish in high school (though admittedly several decades ago – and the only two phrases I recall are “Where is the library?” and “Will you wash my back?” neither likely to help me out of this situation, but I was admittedly grasping at straws).
Maybe she had, too!
“Quien es?” I asked, pointing to the egg, not exactly sure if I had asked “What is it?” “How is this?” or “Where is this?” The server’s flinch told me she was really trying to understand my query but was no closer in Spanish than in English.
My final attempt at communication was charades. I raised the egg-and-gelatin-filled-shot-glass and looked at it quizzically. Suddenly she understood my question. She stuck her tongue out (not all the way a snotty or disrespectful kid would – in a nice way) and gently touched it.
A first course palate cleaner, I now understood. That’s what the shot glass held. I smiled and nodded and started eating the egg and gelatin.
Looking back, I think her gentle touching of her stuck-out tongue was to convey a different message: “Pal, if you can choke down a gelatin covered, hard boiled, pigeon egg the rest of the meal will taste like the best meal of your life.”
And she was right. Following the palate cleanser, my cold soup and mushroom-red-pepper-chicken-onion-sausage kebob tasted just dandy.
As I left, I smiled and said, “merci” to my waitress. After all, we were friends, having spoken three languages and played charades over lunch.
An earlier version of this story appeared in North Kitsap Herald, July 1, 2006.
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