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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten some really good meals and off set them with grotty highway fast food.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> lament in Matrix Reloaded<\/em>: “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!<\/p>\n

You haven’t lived until you’ve ridden in a Dodge Caliber. What a fun little car!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You haven’t lived until you’ve walked every single isle of a Christmas Tree Shop with your mother in law.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“Je comprend un peu.” I mangled.<\/p>\n

She then started to tell me that she loved me tres tres boucoup. She was happy to call me family.<\/p>\n

Yeah. I cried for about 15 minutes in the car after that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-o4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}