Dinner Party: Do These Pants Make Me Look Grim?

I was invited to dinner at the home of a retired French teacher from my school. We were joined by a retired math teacher, a retired history teacher, and a retired-something-else teacher. It was a regular ol' teacher fest. I'd been told beforehand that everyone wanted to spend the evening practicing their English. Only when I got there, someone said, "Perhaps we could speak French just a little at the beginning, and then start speaking English in a few minutes?"

We spoke French all night. Well, I should say they spoke French all night. I mostly listened and made grocery lists in my head. Ostensibly everyone had gotten together to meet me, The Visiting American, but it didn't take me long to blend in to the upholstery, apparently. It's not that I didn't want to participate, it's more that they talked about hip replacements and osteopaths (like chiropractors who crack all your bones), carpal tunnel surgeries and the various classes they take in their ample leisure time. (Art! Music! Stretching!) There was a quick inventory of who had parents still living, then their care and ailments were discussed at great length. Turns out my parents are pretty healthy, so again, not much to add.

Don't get me wrong, it was interesting. They wanted to talk about Roman Polanski, and you might be surprised by their response. The consensus was that they didn't understand why the European elite rally around him; if he committed a crime (and in their minds, a grown man and a 13-year-old girl does, in fact, constitute a crime), then he should be required to atone for it.

Also interesting: they all lost at least one grandfather in "The War of 1914," and one or both of their parents grew up with no male presence in the home. Americans make a lot of noise about France's resistance to our military endeavors, but you've got to see things from their side. We think of wars in terms of our brave boys heading overseas to defend freedom, and that's true, but for the French it wasn't a distant thing. These wars were fought in their backyards. The Battle of Verdun (in northern France) lasted nine months and killed a quarter of a million people. France had 1.6 million casualties overall. (To compare, the U.S. had 117,000.) They also had more casualties than the U.S. during World War II, and with a fraction of the population. Is it any wonder they're so reticent to go to war? Any wonder they'd rather exhaust diplomatic option when it comes to dealing with Iran and Iraq?

Do me a favor. Please stop perpetuating that whole "we saved your asses" thing. They know. They remember. And they're eternally, sincerely grateful. It's just that this gratitude doesn't extend to following the U.S. blindly into yet another war that could kill off a substantial chunk of their population.

I'm off my soapbox now. Dinner was lamb with apricots and prunes. (Yeah, prunes. I accidentally took one too many from the bowl and wow. I'm pretty sure my ears are clean, too.) For dessert we had ice cream and stewed pears from somebody's father's orchard. Wine was consumed. French was spoken. Somebody drove me home at 11:30 (which makes it an early night, in terms of French dinner parties). I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before school the next morning.

And oh yeah, I've got another invitation to dinner. And this time they swear they're going to speak English. We'll see.