scattyme (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} scattyme) wrote,@ 2007-11-17 14:30:00 |
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Cross-cultural communication is a delicately nuanced fragile flower
Getting ready for a big Thanksgiving meal tonight. This is not something generally done in France, but we have a few American friends here who enjoy having a pot luck at Thanksgiving, and this year it will be at our place. I'm not usually a big meat-eater but I'll make the odd exception for this kind of thing.
So I ordered a free-range turkey at the local supermarket earlier this week. I asked for what I thought was a whole turkey at the deli counter - "un dinde entier" - and the guy behind the counter fell around laughing and said "you mean, like, driving a car? With a seatbelt?" and then fell around laughing again.
I laughed also, with what I hoped was just the right mixture of heartiness and wryness so that he'd think I knew what he was laughing about. I've spent a great deal of energy over the past year and a half working on that laugh and I'm happy to report that I may finally have made some progress with it.
When the guy had wiped his eyes I gestured grandly and with enormous panache at a duck carcass and said "Like that. Only a turkey," and he said "oh, you mean une dinde entière. It's a bit early for Christmas isn't it?", and I said "well, it's for Thanksgiving, like in America", and he said "you mean you really all sit around a table with a big turkey, just like in the movies?".
So now I'm going to feel self-consciously postmodern while I'm eating the turkey. Am I being American by doing this? Does it matter, for example, that I have a more-or-less Irish accent and only got an American passport the day before I moved away from the States?
It's not just me being odd either - the main instigator of this annual get-together is a guy who lived in America for some years but has spent much more of his life elsewhere. Even our American friends who live upstairs hang their laundry out the front balcony to dry, which seems suspiciously European to me.
These mixed identities can be confusing. Am I more American or Irish at this point? A little bit French as well, maybe?
Clearly I'm not the turkey, nor am I driving a car, either with or without a seatbelt.
In fact, now that I think about it, those things actually rank fairly high among all the things I'm thankful for - and as it happens there are quite a few of those.
Getting ready for a big Thanksgiving meal tonight. This is not something generally done in France, but we have a few American friends here who enjoy having a pot luck at Thanksgiving, and this year it will be at our place. I'm not usually a big meat-eater but I'll make the odd exception for this kind of thing.
So I ordered a free-range turkey at the local supermarket earlier this week. I asked for what I thought was a whole turkey at the deli counter - "un dinde entier" - and the guy behind the counter fell around laughing and said "you mean, like, driving a car? With a seatbelt?" and then fell around laughing again.
I laughed also, with what I hoped was just the right mixture of heartiness and wryness so that he'd think I knew what he was laughing about. I've spent a great deal of energy over the past year and a half working on that laugh and I'm happy to report that I may finally have made some progress with it.
When the guy had wiped his eyes I gestured grandly and with enormous panache at a duck carcass and said "Like that. Only a turkey," and he said "oh, you mean une dinde entière. It's a bit early for Christmas isn't it?", and I said "well, it's for Thanksgiving, like in America", and he said "you mean you really all sit around a table with a big turkey, just like in the movies?".
So now I'm going to feel self-consciously postmodern while I'm eating the turkey. Am I being American by doing this? Does it matter, for example, that I have a more-or-less Irish accent and only got an American passport the day before I moved away from the States?
It's not just me being odd either - the main instigator of this annual get-together is a guy who lived in America for some years but has spent much more of his life elsewhere. Even our American friends who live upstairs hang their laundry out the front balcony to dry, which seems suspiciously European to me.
These mixed identities can be confusing. Am I more American or Irish at this point? A little bit French as well, maybe?
Clearly I'm not the turkey, nor am I driving a car, either with or without a seatbelt.
In fact, now that I think about it, those things actually rank fairly high among all the things I'm thankful for - and as it happens there are quite a few of those.
