You know what they say, if you’ve got to try…

I was finishing up the self appointed task of tidying up the family room. Mind you this was not a run of the mill tidying; but a furniture rearranging, inventory sorting, junk tossing, lifestyle assessing rumble in the jungle. Did I mention that I didn’t eat lunch?

The next thing I know I’m driving to Cheryl’s parent’s place to visit with the Canadians. Did I mention they are french Canadians; French speaking french Canadians? Visits with these same French speaking french Canadians have had all the thrill of a foreign film without subtitles. With this kind of buildup, can you imagine how grumpy I was when we got there and they were all outside smoking on the patio? We went inside and watched T.V. – by ourselves. At least we didn’t miss the subtitles.

Dinner rolled around and I didn’t say much. The French speaking french Canadians stopped smoking to come in and eat. They did a lot of speaking in their native tongue and I did a lot of brooding over my plate. Chances are I was giving off signals, because by the time desert rolled around one of the better english speakers started translating a few of the amusing anecdotes, trying to explain why everyone was laughing every now and again in order to bring me into the fold. We even had a few brief discussions, mostly small talk fare. The bottom line was this: they were good people, It’s just so hard to be friendly when your tired, hungry and you don’t know your visitor’s language.