Maman and I
made it back from Papi and Mamie’s place in France where we stayed for 25 days…
and everybody seems to have survived.
Let me tell
you though, I thought it was only in the USA that I was misunderstood, but it
seems that in France I have the same problem. People just don’t seem to get me
wherever I go.
Take hugging
for example. I certainly have a different technique than most: if you are
sitting, I find a way to climb on you or most accurately, to jump on you. It’s
incredible how people are sensitive and my hugging is met by shouts and screams
as I bump in faces, torsos and stomachs.
People then tend to want to put me
down as I pull on every part of their body that I can reach, laughing hysterically
while I am at it.
If you are
standing, my preferred huggable part is legs. I hold super tight to one leg and
in return I get a lot of shaking going on, like people want to get rid of me or
something. I even tried this with my cousin who is over 6 feet tall.
My communication
style is also totally misunderstood. People can’t seem to decipher my codes. If
I am asked a direct question, I will often answer with some made up words like “gagagougou”
or my preferred one at the moment “poop, poop, poop”. It’s a code people, it is
supposed to be funny. Apparently even Maman is not getting that at all and
always gets mad at me. Come on, I know I am not the only one doing that. The
other day I laughed so hard reading that Calvin and Hobbes story where Calvin
is asked to explain in his own words what gravity is and he answers: “Prot zan
cot ra tzigo zo.” I wish I could meet that Calvin kid.
Another one
of my attributes that results in a lot of misunderstanding is my throwing of a
variety of objects. My intent here is to see people’s reflexes. Believe me,
people are no better in France than they are in the USA. Bad, bad reflexes. Take throwing my
stuffed animal at Papi while he is having his breakfast dunking his bread into
his bowl of coffee. Did he catch it? No; bad reflexes that ended in my animal
face first in a coffee bowl, Papi and
the kitchen floor all covered in coffee. And who gets in trouble? ME.
Unbelievable. And that’s just one example of a throwing that went bad.
Meeting a
lot of new people has never been my forte but Maman seems to think that if I
was not making a big deal out of it, it would go smoothly: just say a quick hi
or wave to all and say hi, she would say to me in an attempt to prep me before any
new encountering. That is definitely not my style though. I prefer to hide for
a while and if you send kids to try to get me to come and meet the crowd, it
could be a good technique but not when I find a hose behind the house we are at
and I begin spraying whoever is attempting to get me to just come and have fun.
That day I got 4 people soaking wet before somebody thought about turning the
water off and thus stopping the fun I was having.
But what gets misunderstood the most by all I met is what I call opposite language. Sure I don't advertise that I function using opposite language but that's what I do. Let's say you tell me "Come here right now", you know that I obviously heard "Run away in the other direction". If you say "Stop that" I hear "Keep doing this annoying thing you are doing". And so forth. You get it right? So why is it so hard for others to understand that.
And why was
Maman constantly apologizing to people about my behavior during this trip when they are the ones
that did not get me? Like you, it leaves me speechless.
Maman says
that luckily I also got to show signs that I can be quite normal (Pfff, whatever THAT means) and we had quite some fun together and with others too.
The weather
was super fantastic for our entire stay and we went to the beach countless times,
even enjoying the warmish water when it was high tide.
My favorite
experience was acrobatics in trees where you get to walk from one tree to the
other passing through a variety of obstacles or going down zip lines. Very much
fun for me… I needed to keep encouraging Maman who was quite the scaredy cat
on that one.
We visited
castles too and I could not get enough of going up and down those old towers
and thinking it was a good thing I was not living at that place during night
time… too scary for me this time.
We went on a
boat to visit an island and walked from one end of the island to the other.
We visited
Le village Gaulois that was super fun and reminded me of the books of Asterix
and Obelix: an amusement park with zero electronics but wooden toys and games using
ingenious pulleys, gears and other mechanical systems.
We went
fishing with Papi too when the tide was super low and we got crabs, shrimp that we ate and
little fish that we would end up putting back in the sea.
We spend a
lot of time with Maman’s friends and visited with a lot of family members too.
We even had a private celtic music concert by Maman's cousins and their kids. Quite cool!
I had the most fun with my younger cousins as we got to spend nearly 4 days
together. They were all older than me and would also wonder if I was
always acting this wild, but we still had a good time together.
So voilà, my
trip in a nutshell, and there are some more pictures about it in the little videos
we made.
In the
meantime, Papa was busy working his normal hours and working at home on
remodeling my bathroom. Yep, he was barely done with the master bathroom when
we left for France but still decided to bulldoze the other bathroom and use his
time off from me to work nonstop… not that smart of a choice I am telling you
because you need a lot of energy and patience when I am around.
But of
course there is still a lot to do and more week-ends dedicated to remodeling
are on the agenda.
I also just
turned 6 and will tell you more about that in another post.
Enjoy the
pics and the videos,
Noah
Les plages
Accrobranches
Châteaux et Village Gaulois
En Famille... chez Papi et Mamie
En Famille... Oncles, Tante, Cousins, Cousines
