Put your Thumb out, COME ON!

When I lived in France I learned the art of the Hitchhike.

I'm not sure if any of you have experienced this, but for some reason Hitch Hiking is a 100% legit way of getting around when you're in Europe.  My buddy and I were talking about this the other day when I mentioned my follies with hitching and he brought up a bunch of random experiences of his own when he was living abroad for a year or two (but he was 23, which is a little safer than my 16 years). We were going back and forth on what worked, what didn't (hint: NOOOOO skeezy mustaches.  If you plan on trying to get a ride... you probably ought to get your shave on! Cause drivers don't want mustache rides).

Ange (of coffee family fame) and I probably hitched on 80% of our outtings.  At first the fearful american in me was all... "AREYOUFUCKINGINSANE?!  We. CAN.NOT. Hitchhike.  That's like RAPE and PILLAGE waiting to happen! " 

And her carefree french attitude just laughed at me.  "Corie, this is not NYC... come on.  Get in the car."  

The "car" was a tiny Peugeot with three other girls already in it heading for the center of the city. ALRIGHT fine.  Three girls, what can it hurt? We got in and they let us out, just as we had planned, exactly where we were going (which SHOULD have been school.  But Ange was a bad influence). And suddenly I was ALL ABOUT the hitch.  By the end of the year I was flagging down prospective hitches like they were cabs.  Chatting up the drivers, learning about their lives, what they were up to.  It was like a social experiment. 

  

Throughout the year we had a number of hilarious encounters.  My favorite of which being when we hitched a ride at 2am from a couple of really sketchy looking dudes who were probably 22ish, while Ange and I (in all of our nubile glory) were out in some CRAZY-short skirts and flats.   We probably looked like jailbait, when I think back on it.  We had been dancing all night, I was totally sober (as always, I was an uptight teen) and covered in sweat, but Ange couldn't claim anything CLOSE to sober, so I was in charge of getting us home, because she was useless and I think at that point my french was actually better than hers. 

Then, after one of the boys winked at us from the front seat and asked where we needed to go in the most horrific french I've ever heard to this day (and I suffered through a LOT of american highschool and college-level french classes) he turned to his buddy and said --in the most obvious Savannah Accent I've heard on anyone under the age of 40-- "My boy, I think we have us a couple of perfect french conquests!  Our night just got better."  Seriously, I didn't know Savannah youth had picked up that accent.  I thought it was just the oldies. 

I stared at him in some kind of wonder, still dazed about the accent not to mention the idea of being conquered, and without thinking, said: "Savannah, you're from Savannah. What's your name?!" In my perfect, Atlanta-based  english.   Needless to say, he turned white.  And started back pedaling.  But at that same moment Drunk-Ange broke the tension when she leaned over the front seat and started making out with the driver.  While we were in motion.  Then of course she climbed into the passenger's lap and stared at him intently until he moved into the back seat.

Way to go, Ange.  Now I'm sitting next to a creep-o from Savannah, and  you're making out with our driver.  

Never speak english in a foreign country imagining that you are being sneaky.  You're definitely not.  And Ange will totally help you out if you're in need of a conquest.  No need to be shady about it.  Just hope she doesn't vomit on you.  Even though you deserve it, and instead you're getting to third base. While driving.

The guy I was sitting next to and I still talk occasionally.  He lives in Atlanta, works for some record company, and spends a lot of time on Facebook, as far as I can tell.   Not sure about his compatriot.

And the next night?  Totally unphased,  we hitched again, and all was back to normal.  I have yet to ever tell my mother about this.  Partially because I know she'd disapprove, and partially because I'm not sure it matters anymore.

4 minutes to heaven.

I'm always amazed by how quickly my thoughts turn to coffee in the morning.  It's usually the first thing I do once the girls and the fats have calmed down enough for me to think straight (actually, it's always the first thing I do.  Come downstairs, scoff at how ridiculous dogs can be before 5 am, and then turn on the stove.)  It's an addiction, a need.  I'd like to say it's all in the ritual, but to be honest I'm positive that it's only 25% ritual and 75% addiction.

I'm not a nice person without coffee.  I used to be.  I swear that I used to be.  But somewhere in the past 5 or 6 years I got addicted.  I blame it partially on my work and 2 boyfriends,  but also on France.   I don't mean the country, but I kind of do.

When I was younger I spent a good bit of time "en france" ("in france", if it's too early for snobbery) at different times, although it's been far, far too long for me to claim any sort of fluency or accuracy with my foreign language skills. Don't get me wrong,  I can still string together a pretty good set of expletives.  You know, should some scary, tween street gang dressed in purple berets and armed with cigarettes come at me in the middle of the street with song and dance demanding my brooch, or a light.

But that's beside the point.  At the end of my stay in France I was living with a woman, aptly named, France, and 3 of her 4 children.  The closest to my age was Ange. A wonderfully vibrant 15-year-old french girl with so much tenacity I didn't know what to do with myself.  She would flit around the apartment at all hours of the day or night, listening to classical music mashed up with weezer songs and dragging me out of the apartment to go to farm parties (I'll explain later).  To this day, I haven't been able to find that music OR someone quite as vivacious as Ange was. 

As graceful as Ange was jubilant, France was what we americans would consider "typically french."  She was beautiful, confident, smart, well-dressed and didn't put up with anyone's shit.  Monday through friday she drilled me with verbs, conjugations, nouns from a seat across the kitchen table, her hair perfectly coiffed and draping over her striped sweaters.  As far as she was concerned, the french I'd been brought up with in the south of France was nowhere NEAR the level of sophistication required of her apartment dwellers (She's from Paris.  I wish that this didn't "explain it" but she grew up in one of those hoity toity french neighborhoods with maids, doormen, dogwalkers, grocery shoppers and butt-wipers.).  

Haughty or not, I loved her.  I would spend my days at school learning NOTHING because not only was I a year behind due to a minor language barrier, but I had studied everything they study in Highschool before arriving --I'm an overacheiver, but that's another story all together.  And when I would make it back to the apartment, I'd run to see what France was up to while Ange set to her homework after scoffing and thoroughly rolling her eyes at how strangely attached to her "uncool" mother I'd become. 

And this, several somewhat useless paragraphs later, is where my addiction to coffee began.  France would greet me, tell me to have a seat, then step into the kitchen to grab her ready-to-go french press and some perfectly warmed water from a teakettle.  She would pour the water while talking to me and so our afternoon began.  It sounds ridiculous, but she talked. I listened and watched.   She had perfected, and I do mean perfected, the art of french press coffee. 

I'm still working on it a decade later.  After pouring the water we chatted about things I hadn't understood at school, like chemistry and certain things the fellas would say to me, when suddenly, as if by some sorcery, she turned to the coffee after about 4 minutes to press the plunger as if she was a marionette.  I'm still not sure she even knew she was doing it.

I'd say I have two big regrets from my year in France at 16.  One of which we'll discuss later... (ok, fine.  A boy named Julien.  He was adorable, and enamored of me --even if it was my shiny, crass, crazy american-ness.  But I chose to ignore him.  Dance with him once, but ignore him in the end.  It's a longer story than that.  Maybe more later)  But my second greatest regret is that I never asked France just how the HELL she made coffee so perfectly without even pausing to think about it.  How on EARTH can someone make a drink that can so easily go awry without any expended effort?!  The only viable option I can think of is that she was magic. Or a vampire.

Anyway,  Long story short.  I've been working on my French Press skills for a while.  And just when I think I've got the timing engrained into my brain, I'll stop using a timer.  You know what happens?

It turns out GROSS. That's what happens.  Somehow my hopes that France is somewhere deep in my soul, just itching to let her grace slip out, are squashed by my completely american inability to focus on any one given task.   Suddenly four minutes turns into ten and my efforts are shot to hell.  Why?  Cause I've been multi-dabbling again. 

So, for the time being.  I'm sticking to timers.