If you're a dumb ass like me, you chose to live somewhere unnaturally cold, gray, dry and blustery for, what seems like, year-round. Every day is like walking into a lung-incapacitating vortex that threatens to cripple you where you stand.
Now that the scene is set, let's explore the type of people who inhabit this deathly wasteland.
1. Unidentifiables
I like to pride myself with belonging to this group. We are the select class of winter-goers who hate life and show it by the way we dress. GIANT parkas, hoods that triple the size of our heads, boots that could walk through the River Styx and not be affected, mittens that hideously deform our hands into penguin flippers, and scarves that leave only our squinting eyes left visible. Trust me, we wish we could wear eye-muffs if such a thing existed. The best part is, no one knows who the fuck you are and thanks to the parka, you can walk and fart to keep warm. Basically, by the time you get to where you're headed, you're sweating and you're fucking proud of it.
These are the people who wear sexy, wool coats that hug their lovely shoulders and slender arms and hang to the mid-thigh. Son of a bitch, these motherfuckers are classy. They may casually toss a knock-off Burberry print scarf over their shoulder and haphazardly loop it around their neck. They often beg the question, what's a hat? because their hair is so ungodly beautiful as it somehow resists the whipping winds of icy hate. Instead of looking like they have rosacea, their cheeks only adopt a lovely pink warmth and their lips retain all their color and plumpness instead of shriveling up into what appears to be an old woman's chapped vagina. Such horrid beasts they are.. they wear fitted leather gloves that allow them to have all of their fingers instead of some sad imitation of a flightless bird's wing plus a stocky thumb... I like to think that they are beautiful, yet hating themselves every second for how cold they are. Quite frankly, they are a majestic, snowy animal:
I thought I would take this opportunity to memorialize what a dumb ass I sound like in french. I sit here typing this from my bedroom while the cleaning lady and host mother speak rapid french. She just asked if the french dog was finished barking - funny story about that dog, he's deaf - the vacuum was started and then a french baby began to cry. I'm also rather certain she screamed, "are you done vomiting!?" See the chaos I put up with? Things are bound to get lost in translation and I inevitably look like an American fuck.
1. This instance is not so bad, but my Mom and Dad visited me here, bless them, and my host mom gave my vaginal birth mother a nice book of the region. A couple days after my parents had left, my host mom asked if my real mom had looked at the book. Now, mind you, I had no idea if my mother had looked at the book, but I went ahead and said that she had thoroughly enjoyed the book. While she sat on top of the plane..
2. My horrific mistake of telling a six year old that my favorite animal was a baby seal. Now, the word for seal in french is phoque, aka, FUCK in english. I have this little blond six-year old looking up at me saying FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, tonanimal préféré estun bébé fuck. I wanted to to pull a Russel Edgington again and shoot the phoque up into the sky.
3. For about two months now, I have been saying "salut" every time I walk in the door. It's friendly and informal enough for family so I'm not saying, good day to you ma'am every time I come home from school. Apparently my American accent bastardizes the shit out of that little word "salut" and makes it sound something like sah-low (phonetically). In french, however, sal-oh, which is actually the word "salop" means something very different than "hey." Let's just say I've been calling my wonderful 70 year-old host mother who takes care of me, cooks for me and loves me a man slut since I got here. Oh, let's not forget that I've been calling the six year-old a man slut, too.
4. I had known that a friend of my host mom's and said friend's husband were no longer together. I assumed divorce, naturally. Aparrently my American ears didn't catch the whole story.. while at dinner one night, we are talking about this friend and her life and how her story is depressing as fuck and whatnot. So, I venture into being sympathetic and trying to generate some conversation.
"Well, do they still speak?" I ask innocently. My host mother looks at me with quizzical eyes and draws back like I've just attempted to stab her with a fork. Feeling awkward and feeling the need to fill the silence, I continue and try again. "Do they still speak? Even after divorce people can have friendly relationships." I let it hang, I feel supremely awkward.
"Do they still speak?" she asked.
"Yes, yes!" I say, excited that she finally understood my question.
"Well, he's dead," she says.
"Ah." I grab my water as quickly as I can and take a drink to excuse me from having to say anything more.
4. Body language in its purest form. The toilet is right next to my host-mother's bedroom, where she slumbers and snores like an asthmatic bear. You all know how we feel about using public bathrooms, friends' bathrooms, etc. here at Quimsical Audecdotes, and if you don't, you can find out here, hizzere or maybe even hurr. Trust me, they're all worth a read. So, I'm naturally apprehensive about using the toilet to hershey squirt next to her bedroom and I can tell by the outrageous size of my stomach that I am about as full of gas as this hiphopanonymous:
Nonetheless, I creep down the creakiest stairs known to man, there is no hiding my descent. I use my iPod light to guide me to the door that plainly reads: toilette. She is snoring deeply, I may proceed quietly. I open the door and it makes a creak akin to a fart. I pause... she's still snoring. I enter fully and immediately rip my shorts off and sit myself down. GAH, the door is still slightly open. I reach forward like Mufassa trying to save himself from falling off of the cliff and then I realize: my own ass is my Scar.. I ERUPT in a horrific cacophony that I attribute to the canned lentils I ate earlier in the day and I can only describe the force with which air exited me as "farting hurricanes." It's gale force winds that could bestow flight upon a blue whale. Once mine ass has had its say, I freeze, screaming silently and listening. She has stopped snoring.. PHOQUE. I console myself by knowing that I can blame it on the six year old if I have to, in much the same mentality as this creepy ass little girl:
