Living abroad brings to light cultural quirks and traditions that you wouldn't otherwise be exposed to had you stayed in your home country. It's the unexpected little things that you wouldn't even think of before setting foot on international land that makes life as a foreigner interesting, challenging and thought-provoking. Little did I know that I would become privy to these nuances in my own country, five months before even setting foot in Paris.
Picture it. 2009. Fashion Corporate Office. New York City.
I was heading to an impromptu sales meeting that my bosses had called and before heading into the conference room, I stopped in the back office to grab the sell-thru list that our intern, Laure had prepared for me. Laure had it ready, as well as my Alliance Française homework that she had corrected for my class that evening. Laure then approached me with open arms to congratulate me on my "well written" essay about finding colocation in France. I found her display of affection strange because she was someone who I had once thought was completely standoffish which I learned later was just her shyness, and my essay was plain awful and had been massacred with her red correction pen. So why was she touching me?
Running a few minutes late because I had stopped in the bathroom to brush the cilantro taste out of my mouth from my La Esquina take-out lunch, I quickly charged over to the meeting. I walked in to see that everyone had arrived and quietly turned around to shut the door behind me. As I had my back turned to the room, I heard a roar of laughter from the other attendees. Just what everyone loves. Walking into a room - a meeting, no less - and hearing a cackle of laughter. Before turning around to face my captive audience, I did a quick evaluation of my situation. I was confident that I was fine because I did a quick once-over in the bathroom. But on second thought, I was wearing the vintage white dress that I have in the past, underestimated its transparency. Luckily this day, I knew for sure that my period-stained undies were not showing like they were at a meeting with the designer several months earlier because I was wearing a slip. That experience taught me the valuable lesson that oversleeping on the day of a crucial meeting, after a night of drinking with your roommate, when you were supposed to be at the laundromat cleaning said soiled panties is never the way to go. My appearance was in check, so what was this brouhaha about?
I turned around to find grown men with tears of laughter streaming down their faces and from what I could gather, it was at my expense. I touched my back and felt that there was something there, a piece of paper. Crumbled in my hand from me snatching it, I looked at it and saw that it was blank. I immediately dismissed it and set it next to my binder of notes. A piece of paper on my back? Okay, I've seen worse and was hardly embarrassed by this and with confidence, proceeded to start the meeting.
Although I was ready to work, my usually stiff French bosses could simply not get it together and were laughing hysterically. Were they drunk? And if so, I wanted in. I closed my binder, rested my arms on the table and looked at them expectantly, ready for them to share with me what was going on.
"Sorry, we simply cannot continue," Jean-Pierre said with a red face."Clearly." I replied back, amused with the unexpected light-hardheartedness of a meeting that I was nervous about minutes earlier. "You had a fish on your back!" Matthieu informed me. "A fish?" I said looking at them as if they had all lost their fucking minds. A fish on my back? Come on. I went to college in the Pacific Northwest and my days of "stoner talk" were long over. Yes and there was also a fairy dancing with Grateful Dead bears in my dorm room once too. What were these guys on? "The fish!" Jean-Pierre said while pointing to the crumbled piece of paper that was on my back. A fish? Oh, the paper. I apprehensively took the paper and opened it, which revealed that it was cut out in the shape of a fish. Strange, but so what.
"Poisson d'avril!" Matthieu felicitously declared with his fist up. This triggered a round of cheers in the conference room as well as a complete disregard to the meeting, as the French chatter took over. Me being the only non-French speaking person, sat there in silence, wishing that I understood and wondering when my French studies were going to kick in, so I could one day share their joy. Jean-Pierre then explained to me that on April 1st in France, it is a playful joke to put a fish on the back on an unsuspecting target who then be called the "April Fish". I was waiting for the punchline but that was all that I was going to get for an explanation from Jean-Pierre. So this is what was so funny? How was that even possible? It was the least funny thing that I have ever heard of - in my life. Well, the French aren't exactly famous for their biting wit, so if anything it was consistent. Out of politeness, I laughed at his explanation as if everything had been clarified for me and feigned that I understood why they were literally rolling on the floor laughing.
The meeting, that was now tainted with the humor of the April Fish, went swimmingly well as I had nothing but good news to report and walked back to the intern office to hand Laure the meeting notes. As I walked in, I could see all little French intern eyes looking up from their computers, desperate to find out what happened after their "clever" fish practical joke they played on me. Upon their artless interrogation, I pretended that I had no idea what they were talking about but me being a terrible liar because my face reveals all when I'm trying to fib, they didn't believe me and basked in the glory of their dumb joke. This then opened up a discussion and comparison of April Fool's Day jokes.
"Whatever happened to an old-fashioned kick me sign?" I asked the girls, genuinely intrigued with their joke that I did not find at all funny. "A "kick me" sign?" Laure asked with concern, "That is just mean and violent." Her face fell as she translated to Camille and Julie, the finance interns, our version of April Fool's Day jokes. I seemed to have crushed little Laure's American dreams with our cruel sense of humor and to save her from thinking we're completely evil, I let her in on another one of our classics. "What about when you're 16, calling your mother and telling her you're pregnant?" I added, "Always a crowd pleaser..." I trailed off as they all looked at me in horror. Okay, April 1st is different to us Americans and I wasn't going bridge this cultural gap between me and the French on this afternoon in SoHo.
This was one of my first interactions with cultural differences and traditions in my adapted culture, not realizing that I had several years of poisson d'avrils ahead of me.
Happy April Fool's Day everyone and if you're in France, watch your back for paper fish!
