French Windows

Once upon a time, I was an exchange student in France. I had been taking French for ten years. I wasn't under any illusions that I was totally fluent, but I figured I could speak fairly well. That turned out to be a lie. It turns out that the French speak something that even the French don't consider French. It contained rapid fire words that I'd never heard, and when I asked them for meanings, they told me it wasn't "real French" and they didn't want me learning slang. I walked around talking like Little Lord Fauntleroy the entire time.

I lived with a family. Madame (who probably had another name, but I never learned it) showed me how to shut the foldy metal shutters at night, which I thought was adorably French. One evening, after everyone in the house had gone to bed, and outside, the cold of winter was starting to give way to hints of spring, I sat at the window in the dark, where I could see the church spires of the medieval part of the city in the moonlight. What I should have done next is close the shutters. What I did do was turn on the light. There was a loud pop, and a perfectly round hole in the window pane. It's really an indictment of the educational system that I took French for ten years, and while I could endlessly ask the whereabouts of the train station, I never learned the critical phrase: "I think someone shot my window."

Well, that's not fair, I did know the word for window: fenêtre. And we had just watched a Three Musketeers movie, so I knew the word for "musket." I stood in the dark of the hallway, knocking on Madame and Monsieur's room saying "Excusez-moi? Excusez-moi? There has been a musket and a window? Pardonnez moi?" until everybody in the house woke up, including the tiny sausage that was Daisy the dog, who helpfully yapped her head off.

Monsieur and his son, Philippe, looked at the damaged window and Madame sat on the bed to comfort me and asked, how this could happen through the shutters? I had to shamefully admit I hadn't closed them yet. They asked what could have caused it? And I speculated that it was a musket, which made it sound like there were 16th century dueling happening outside. They wondered why anyone would want to shoot at my window with a musket, of all things. This would have been a good moment to just shrug and look clueless. But instead I said that the hole was pretty small. Maybe it was a toy musket.

They all pulled back and looked at me. A toy musket? That can shoot through a window? A toy?

And because I sensed, once again, that I really wasn't getting my point across, I said, you know, like a BB gun? Only I said bey (because that's French for B) musket (because it was the only gun I knew).

And only when Madame broke the long staring silence, shrieking, "Oh! My! God! I knew America was a violent, violent, country but they have to arm the babies?" did I realize that I had to close my mouth for good. And also the shutters.