You haven’t lived until you have stood in front of a casket, receiving family members you have never met, thanking them for coming and expressing their sorrow, in French. And personally don’t speak a word of it.
You haven’t lived until you get ignored completely by some of these people either, not accepted due to queerness or your Englishness, or whatever.
You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten some really good meals and off set them with grotty highway fast food.
You haven’t lived until you play cards with 4 Quebecois ladies (SharkBoy included). They raise swearing in French to new heights, creating a new art form that needs to be documented (much like Lambert Wilson’s lament in Matrix Reloaded: “It’s like wiping your ass with silk.”). They made it seem so effortless and matter of fact so I tested the water and muttered “sonofa BITCH” on a losing hand – the last part being a bit too loud. SharkBoy’s aunt took that to be directed to her. She howled! I was in!
You haven’t lived until you’ve ridden in a Dodge Caliber. What a fun little car!
You haven’t lived until you come back from a funeral to your below average small town Comfort Inn hotel room to the sounds of noisy English (broken) love making.
You haven’t lived until you’ve walked every single isle of a Christmas Tree Shop with your mother in law.
You haven’t lived until that same mother in law tells to you something that no other boyfriend’s (or husband’s!) parent has ever said to you, ever. On the way out the door after all this weekend, she stopped me and looked right at me and said: “Do. You. Understand. French?” Up until that moment it has been pigeon mumblings and polite phrases (except for the card game). It was her first real direct attempt to “speak” to me.
“Je comprend un peu.” I mangled.
She then started to tell me that she loved me tres tres boucoup. She was happy to call me family.
Yeah. I cried for about 15 minutes in the car after that.
7 thoughts on “You Haven’t Lived Part the Second”
Awesome post!
There’s a script in there. “My Big, Fat,French-Canadian Funeral”?
The swearing thing… it doesn’t count if it’s in English. When the old ladies start going off in French, that’s when The Priest has to get involved. I play cards every other week with my grandmother and her sister… it’s the wierdest feeling listening to them curse each other and the cards out. And, trust me, if you got tres tres boucouped you’re tres boucouped for life.
You haven’t lived until you’ve had a 50-year old 240lb solvent huffing weight lifting ex-nazi skinhead named Fred Nietzsche who loved Louis L’Amour novels and his pet rabbit as your neighbour in a rooming house.
apparently i haven’t lived. no worries, life is over-rated anyway.
you haven’t lived until you’ve spotted a snapping turtle stranded on the median of a busy highway, convinced the driver to stop! the! car! and then carried a hissing, pissed off turtle by the tail to the safety of a nearby creek.
Sorry to hear the news, pass my thoughts to Sharkboy. Glad to hear there was a happy ending.
Oh, and thanks for giving my a solid reason not to go back to O’Crappy’s. I’ve never really liked that place, but can now give people a real reason for not going, instead of sounding like a difficult bitch for not wanting to eat there.
You haven’t lived until you get caught masturbating to senior citizen pornography.
You haven’t lived until your girlfriend refers to your penis as “Ok looking”.
You haven’t lived until you meet a girl from the internet you plan to cheat on your girlfriend with and she ends up looking nothing like the pictures on her MySpace and you ask her why she would do such a thing and her reply is: “I don’t know.”
This all happened Sunday.
ok one more…
You haven’t lived until you visit CovertJerk.com 😉 (shameless plug)
i enjoy reading your website regularly and even though i’m a prick, i hope you enjoy mine. i posted a video i found on your site last night.
i would also like to add a link from my site to yours so if that’s ok with you, email me.
That’s sweet! Paul’s mom can barely tolerate me.