Over the years I’ve given dozens of lectures to various audiences, but I was a bit intimated by an invitation to speak to a group in Baltimore this winter.
You see, I normally speak to groups that invite me because they’re interested in the subject of my talk, whether some aspect of travel, wine, culture, writing or travel journalism. But at this recent event the group didn’t have any prior interest in France as far as I could tell, so I was unsure about the best approach to speak to them about the country where I live.
Wine was off-limits, they were underage.
Writing was inappropriate, they weren’t very experienced readers.
Pictures, alright, but to show what? Had they even heard of the Eiffel Tower?
So the twelve 4-year-olds of my neice’s pre-school class gathered around me along with their teaching assistant and I started off with a few pictures.
To my surprise, some of them did recognize the Eiffel Tower.
When I asked if they knew anything else about France one boy proudly volunteered that his mother was French. I asked if he knew any French words but he said he couldn’t remember.
I showed them pictures of castles and of kings and queens and princesses. The girls said “Ooooooh!” and claimed to recognize some of them. The boys, not to be undone, said they saw the movie.
They gathered closer as I showed them a picture of my French cat, not telling them that he’d died two years ago, and I taught them how to say cat and dog and mouse and elephant in French.
Most fun of all I had them hold onto each other’s shoulders and taught them how to dance the can-can. One girl had a purple ribbon in her hair.
They were an attentive audience, and I was relieved that no one asked what my favorite restaurant is in Paris and no one’s cell phone went off during the 30-minute talk, which regrettably ended due to snack time, where no one sidled up to me with a glass of wine to ask how to get a work permit in France or the name of a good but reasonably priced hotel in Avignon or to tell me that their daughter would be spending a semester abroad in Lyon.
Instead they had cookies and apple slices and juice and sensed that their parents would soon arrive.
When they did, I asked the teacher to point out the mother of the boy who’d told me that his mother was French.
I went up to her and said, “Bonjour. Your son tells me that you’re French.”
“I’m as French as mud,” she said, or something to that effect.
And his grandmother said, “Is he making up stories again?,” as the boy skipped off to look for a friend.
© 2012
oh, those boys…:-)