Do you remember Sylvester the cat on Saturday morning cartoon television? Do you remember his favourite exasperated exclamation was always, “Sufferin’ succotash”? He would sort of spit as he said it, with a big, sloppy lisp. I always thought it was just a good onomatopoeia; I didn’t realize there really was such a thing as succotash. Not, that is, until I moved to St. Louis.
Well, to be perfectly clear, I wasn’t in the state of Missouri when I realized that there really is such a thing as succotash. (Yes, Virginia, there really is a succotash.) In fact, I was in Illinois, at a pick-your-own apple orchard. I don’t think the people of Illinois know what succotash is either because there was absolutely no-one in line to buy it, even though line-ups for ham-and-bean soup with cornbread muffins were ten deep.
There was a hand-written cardboard sign – you know the kind where the writer didn’t plan well, so the letters are all big and cheerful on the left but taper down small and cramped on the right so the whole sentence can get squeezed in. The sign invited readers “C’MON AND TRY it, you'll love it!” There wasn’t enough room for the price, so it was written sideways, squished near the upper right-hand corner. Only three bucks; what a bargain! So, why did I pass it up? Who knows – maybe I’m not as adventurous as I think I am, eh?
When I got home, I looked up succotash on the internet, only to discover it’s a delicious dish consisting of corn and beans. It just goes to show you that you can’t always judge a food by its handle. In fact, at a recent parent meeting where the school’s cafeteria food was the topic de rigueur, I mentioned that my son might try more hot lunch food if the names of the dishes were not so foreign (e.g. “pulled pork”) to him. We think that sounds like two fat piggies playing tug-of-war or something.
Another mom quickly responded, with surprise and disdain, “Why,” she said, “it’s just barbecue!” I had to laugh because “barbecue” for this northern girl is what we call the big grill on the deck that heats up to 600 degrees and makes my husband feel like he’s contributing to family meal preparation. The only other time I’ve ever heard anyone refer to slow-cooked meat as barbecue was on a ski trip when my lovely friend Heather offered it to me. She kept saying, “We’re eating barbecue. Do you want to have some?”
I like her a lot (and I was hungry...), so I said yes, even though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what she was offering me! Mmmm! For the record, we call that Sloppy Joe...! For the French, from whom the word was borrowed, then shaped, distorted and claimed, the word barbecue is a style of cooking that means putting a skewer from the “barbe” or the hook at the mouth to the “queue” or tail of the animal. (Shudder.) Far too graphic. I love food that says EAT ME, like toasted ravioli.
What, you’ve never had it? You have to come to St. Louis; it’s a specialty here!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Trick or Treat
Today, I was in a Target store (always an expensive experience because you buy all this crap that you didn’t go there for...) and they have their CHRISTMAS decorations out already! I’m talking JOY doormats, red and green towels, and plastic Santa plates! I mean, c’mon, we haven’t even had Hallowe’en yet! It’s mid-October and I’m determined to slow down and enjoy one celebration at a time.
In Belgium, as in much of Europe, Hallowe’en is not celebrated. In fact, I’m pretty sure they think we’re a bunch of kooks who like to cross-dress, ring doorbells in the dark and otherwise act completely nutty. Think about it; early on, we teach our kids not to speak to strangers and then we send them out on a cold, rainy night in a weird get-up to beg for candy at the doors of complete strangers. What are we thinking?
Despite the obvious absurdity, my little family is excited about having a Hallowe’en after three years overseas. There, the Americans in the international community set up a Hallowe’en ritual of sorts in a neighbourhood in which many of them lived. Donating 50 pieces of candy per child in your family got you a map of the neighbourhood and a ticket to join in the fun. It wasn’t exactly door-to-door because the participating homes were pretty far apart from each other but the kids still got to dress up, ring a bell, and yell “Trick or Treat”.
A couple of times, we rang the wrong doorbells by accident, because the house numbers on the map were so small that I had trouble reading them. I couldn’t have been the only one though, because I saw several suspicious Belgians peering out from behind lace curtains at the nonsense on the street and someone called the police, who then cruised by a few times.
On one of the streets, there were quite a few Americans, who decorated their homes with loot collected the previous summer or sent over by an aunt or grandma in time for the scare fest. That street would be thick with kids and parents and the candy would run out quickly. It was only there, on that street, running into people I knew and hearing the kids shout out to classmates, that I felt a tug of nostalgia for the experience “back home”.
I know our street here in St. Louis will be just like that. The houses are cheerfully decorated with carved pumpkins, goblins and fake gravestones. We have hung goofy-looking ghosts from the tree boughs and staked a Happy Hallowe’en sign out front, in case there was any doubt about the new folks on the street participating. We bought these decorations as well as costumes for the kids at a local Hallowe’en store – yes, that’s right, a store open for only six weeks of the year and sells nothing but Hallowe’en stuff!
My kids were shocked when they wandered into the adult aisle in that store. There, you can choose costumes with a big penis hanging in front, or fake pubic hair sticking out of a t-shirt and pants like Austen Powers in his eponymous movies. Personally, I’m surprised by the number of adult costumes in the stores. You too can be a sleezy-looking Dorothy, a sexy Superwoman or a naughty French Maid. Is it just St. Louis, or did I not notice before? I don’t remember that from Toronto and I guarantee that I never saw it in Brussels, except in the real costume store down by the Grand Place, patronized by real cross-dressers and Belgians who dress up only once per year for late-winter Carnival parties.
My husband and I got invited to a costume party once in Brussels. He hates that kind of thing, but I persuaded him to go because I really loved the hosts, a Swedish dad and South African mom who were a ton of fun. We decided to go as Sonny and Cher. I have never had long hair, so I thoroughly enjoyed swinging my rented hip-length straight black hair over my shoulders. “Do I look like Cher?” I asked my husband, who had covered his thinning locks with a wavy brown wig, complete with sideburns, a little moustache, and a glittery open-necked seventies shirt that can only be described as a blouse. No, he said, you look like Elvira, but I look like a parking lot attendant, so let’s not worry about it. Sure enough, we were more obvious than most during the party game where you had to find a certain celebrity in a room full of international guests dressed as not-so-famous Danish singers, French character actors and obscure European politicians.
So now I’m nervous because we were invited to a Hallowe’en party and I’m guessing we probably are expected to dress up. Yikes. Well the kids are ready anyway. My daughter has a blue wig and fake blue eyelashes, but otherwise isn’t sure what she’s going to be. At 11 years of age, she’s not certain if she’s too old to go out trick-or-treating but she’s too proud to admit it, so she’s volunteered to hand out candy at the door. My 9-year old son has no such reservations. He just finished the Harry Potter series and is all set with his round glasses, black cape, and Gryffindor tie.
Trick or treat!
In Belgium, as in much of Europe, Hallowe’en is not celebrated. In fact, I’m pretty sure they think we’re a bunch of kooks who like to cross-dress, ring doorbells in the dark and otherwise act completely nutty. Think about it; early on, we teach our kids not to speak to strangers and then we send them out on a cold, rainy night in a weird get-up to beg for candy at the doors of complete strangers. What are we thinking?
Despite the obvious absurdity, my little family is excited about having a Hallowe’en after three years overseas. There, the Americans in the international community set up a Hallowe’en ritual of sorts in a neighbourhood in which many of them lived. Donating 50 pieces of candy per child in your family got you a map of the neighbourhood and a ticket to join in the fun. It wasn’t exactly door-to-door because the participating homes were pretty far apart from each other but the kids still got to dress up, ring a bell, and yell “Trick or Treat”.
A couple of times, we rang the wrong doorbells by accident, because the house numbers on the map were so small that I had trouble reading them. I couldn’t have been the only one though, because I saw several suspicious Belgians peering out from behind lace curtains at the nonsense on the street and someone called the police, who then cruised by a few times.
On one of the streets, there were quite a few Americans, who decorated their homes with loot collected the previous summer or sent over by an aunt or grandma in time for the scare fest. That street would be thick with kids and parents and the candy would run out quickly. It was only there, on that street, running into people I knew and hearing the kids shout out to classmates, that I felt a tug of nostalgia for the experience “back home”.
I know our street here in St. Louis will be just like that. The houses are cheerfully decorated with carved pumpkins, goblins and fake gravestones. We have hung goofy-looking ghosts from the tree boughs and staked a Happy Hallowe’en sign out front, in case there was any doubt about the new folks on the street participating. We bought these decorations as well as costumes for the kids at a local Hallowe’en store – yes, that’s right, a store open for only six weeks of the year and sells nothing but Hallowe’en stuff!
My kids were shocked when they wandered into the adult aisle in that store. There, you can choose costumes with a big penis hanging in front, or fake pubic hair sticking out of a t-shirt and pants like Austen Powers in his eponymous movies. Personally, I’m surprised by the number of adult costumes in the stores. You too can be a sleezy-looking Dorothy, a sexy Superwoman or a naughty French Maid. Is it just St. Louis, or did I not notice before? I don’t remember that from Toronto and I guarantee that I never saw it in Brussels, except in the real costume store down by the Grand Place, patronized by real cross-dressers and Belgians who dress up only once per year for late-winter Carnival parties.
My husband and I got invited to a costume party once in Brussels. He hates that kind of thing, but I persuaded him to go because I really loved the hosts, a Swedish dad and South African mom who were a ton of fun. We decided to go as Sonny and Cher. I have never had long hair, so I thoroughly enjoyed swinging my rented hip-length straight black hair over my shoulders. “Do I look like Cher?” I asked my husband, who had covered his thinning locks with a wavy brown wig, complete with sideburns, a little moustache, and a glittery open-necked seventies shirt that can only be described as a blouse. No, he said, you look like Elvira, but I look like a parking lot attendant, so let’s not worry about it. Sure enough, we were more obvious than most during the party game where you had to find a certain celebrity in a room full of international guests dressed as not-so-famous Danish singers, French character actors and obscure European politicians.
So now I’m nervous because we were invited to a Hallowe’en party and I’m guessing we probably are expected to dress up. Yikes. Well the kids are ready anyway. My daughter has a blue wig and fake blue eyelashes, but otherwise isn’t sure what she’s going to be. At 11 years of age, she’s not certain if she’s too old to go out trick-or-treating but she’s too proud to admit it, so she’s volunteered to hand out candy at the door. My 9-year old son has no such reservations. He just finished the Harry Potter series and is all set with his round glasses, black cape, and Gryffindor tie.
Trick or treat!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
I am insane.
Today, I found a package of sliced Swiss cheese in the freezer. I have been looking for those cheese slices for about a week now. It’s the first sign of Alzheimer’s, you know; when you start putting things away in the wrong places. Like keys in the sugar bowl or milk in the cupboard (or cheese in the freezer...).
I’ve been trying to prevent it from happening, this creeping insanity, but it’s relentless. It sneaks up on you and tests you out to see how far you can be pushed. It’s like a guest that never goes home. It comes for a visit but moves into the vacant spaces that once were capable of decoding Algebra, learning Latin, making Banana Bread from scratch, remembering piano recitals, and inventing complex games for the eight-year old basketball team.
To be fair, the extent to which I feel insane has been exacerbated by the adoption of a puppy, named Poppy, from a shelter in St. Louis two weeks ago. I have joined the ranks of millions of unwitting parents who capitulate to their daughter’s relentless pleading for a dog. It started when she was a baby; my daughter’s first word was DOG. Awww, that’s so cute, we said. We are now 10 years into what appears, for all intents and purposes, to be an obsessive-compulsive disorder with regard to this mammal.
Over the years, she has collected stuffed dogs, thoughtfully and carefully naming every one of them based on the colour of the toy or the town where she got it. She has dog pictures taped to her walls. She prints pictures of dogs from web-sites. She changes my screen saver to a different dog every week. She takes out library books on raising the little monsters. Okay, okay, you can have a dog! Oh no, did I say that, or did I just think it....?
Guess what? You can give your kid a dog, but it’s the mom who does all the work. Oh sorry, you knew that already. So did I. But, did it stop me? Oh no. I took one look at that cute little face attached to her clumsy little seven-pound wrinkly body and fell in love. Poppy is a mix of several dogs, we think, although we can’t figure out more than what is known: mother was a lab and hound mix. The rest is a mystery, but the wrinkles, black nose and worried eyes would point to a possible beagle.
Oh listen to me, would you? I am insane. For the first week, she cried going into her crate and she cried half way through the night. Don’t you find it amazing that only one person could hear her – me! So, there I was, in my pyjamas at two and three in the morning, trying to persuade her to go potty outside. She had no concept of time, so after doing her business, she’d bite my slippers and wag her tail, inviting me to play. Groan.
I was feeling pretty smug – a sure sign that something will go wrong – after a few days of “potty training” because I was able to get her outside in time for nearly every pee and poop. Then, St. Louis got hit with a whopper of a thunderstorm. It was the kind that just sits there, booming away overhead for hours, with every thunder clap being answered nearly simultaneously by a flash of blue-streaked lightening. Poppy was terrified and would not go outside. I kept trying but, at a certain point, you know when you’ve met your match. That day, mine was Mother Nature, and she was having a good laugh at my expense!
So now the weather is a bit fairer and we’re settling into a bit of a routine, this dog and me. There are still several things I can’t find, but I’m blaming that on Alz-hounders ... you know the dementia you get after several sleepless nights and long hours playing with and training a baby hound! Wish me luck!
Woof.
I’ve been trying to prevent it from happening, this creeping insanity, but it’s relentless. It sneaks up on you and tests you out to see how far you can be pushed. It’s like a guest that never goes home. It comes for a visit but moves into the vacant spaces that once were capable of decoding Algebra, learning Latin, making Banana Bread from scratch, remembering piano recitals, and inventing complex games for the eight-year old basketball team.
To be fair, the extent to which I feel insane has been exacerbated by the adoption of a puppy, named Poppy, from a shelter in St. Louis two weeks ago. I have joined the ranks of millions of unwitting parents who capitulate to their daughter’s relentless pleading for a dog. It started when she was a baby; my daughter’s first word was DOG. Awww, that’s so cute, we said. We are now 10 years into what appears, for all intents and purposes, to be an obsessive-compulsive disorder with regard to this mammal.
Over the years, she has collected stuffed dogs, thoughtfully and carefully naming every one of them based on the colour of the toy or the town where she got it. She has dog pictures taped to her walls. She prints pictures of dogs from web-sites. She changes my screen saver to a different dog every week. She takes out library books on raising the little monsters. Okay, okay, you can have a dog! Oh no, did I say that, or did I just think it....?
Guess what? You can give your kid a dog, but it’s the mom who does all the work. Oh sorry, you knew that already. So did I. But, did it stop me? Oh no. I took one look at that cute little face attached to her clumsy little seven-pound wrinkly body and fell in love. Poppy is a mix of several dogs, we think, although we can’t figure out more than what is known: mother was a lab and hound mix. The rest is a mystery, but the wrinkles, black nose and worried eyes would point to a possible beagle.
Oh listen to me, would you? I am insane. For the first week, she cried going into her crate and she cried half way through the night. Don’t you find it amazing that only one person could hear her – me! So, there I was, in my pyjamas at two and three in the morning, trying to persuade her to go potty outside. She had no concept of time, so after doing her business, she’d bite my slippers and wag her tail, inviting me to play. Groan.
I was feeling pretty smug – a sure sign that something will go wrong – after a few days of “potty training” because I was able to get her outside in time for nearly every pee and poop. Then, St. Louis got hit with a whopper of a thunderstorm. It was the kind that just sits there, booming away overhead for hours, with every thunder clap being answered nearly simultaneously by a flash of blue-streaked lightening. Poppy was terrified and would not go outside. I kept trying but, at a certain point, you know when you’ve met your match. That day, mine was Mother Nature, and she was having a good laugh at my expense!
So now the weather is a bit fairer and we’re settling into a bit of a routine, this dog and me. There are still several things I can’t find, but I’m blaming that on Alz-hounders ... you know the dementia you get after several sleepless nights and long hours playing with and training a baby hound! Wish me luck!
Woof.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Thanks Given
You need a pound a person. That’s what the butcher told me when I popped in to Straub’s for a fresh turkey on Friday. “But”, he said, “We don’t have fresh turkeys. You’re not going to get them until Thanksgiving.”
He suggested turkey breasts and I spent a serious moment pondering how I could pass off breasts as a full turkey dinner, but you just can’t get good gravy without the dark meat and all the rest of it. Then, I did it. I played the Canada card. I told him it was Canadian Thanksgiving. I don’t know why. Perhaps I just wanted to share knowledge. Perhaps I was just a little homesick. Perhaps I was annoyed that I couldn’t get a fresh bird in October, which is when my Canadian ancestors, with their shorter growing season, began the tradition of giving thanks for a bountiful harvest.
In the end, the butcher offered me a thawed twelve pounder, which I thought would suffice for my husband and three of his sports-obsessed buddies who’d flown down to St. Louis to catch college and pro football, hockey and baseball semi-finals. A pound a person rolls off the tongue nicely but, the reality is, it’s not enough turkey. There’s never enough turkey. Why is that?
Apparently turkey has some kind of dopamine trigger. That’s why you feel so good after you’ve eaten three heaping platefuls swimming in gravy, chased by pumpkin pie. Personally, I think it’s the company. I can’t remember a Thanksgiving dinner spent alone and for that I am always grateful. However, in Belgium, where Thanksgiving is not celebrated (it’s a “new world” custom), the weekend would come and go, with the only reminder being phone calls from back home and full reports of long weekend travels and events.
Thanksgiving is an important and universal family celebration here in the USA, as it is in Canada. For my husband and me, though, Thanksgiving means adding another chair to the table and including yet another friend at dinner. I’ve lost count of the number of meals where every chair in the house is pressed into service, squeezed around a collection of dining, kitchen, and folding card tables. Because we’ve lived far from our families for many years, we tend to celebrate with family, if possible, and with friends, always.
This weekend was no exception. On Friday, I cooked a small turkey full of stuffing, buttery mashed potatoes, cheesy Brussels sprouts, cubed turnips and sweet corn. Seven of us toasted Canadian thanksgiving, including our two kids who like nothing better than to clink glasses and say, “cheers”! As I looked around the table, I gave thanks, as always for health, family, and friends – oh yes, and for my one pound allotment of turkey!
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone!
He suggested turkey breasts and I spent a serious moment pondering how I could pass off breasts as a full turkey dinner, but you just can’t get good gravy without the dark meat and all the rest of it. Then, I did it. I played the Canada card. I told him it was Canadian Thanksgiving. I don’t know why. Perhaps I just wanted to share knowledge. Perhaps I was just a little homesick. Perhaps I was annoyed that I couldn’t get a fresh bird in October, which is when my Canadian ancestors, with their shorter growing season, began the tradition of giving thanks for a bountiful harvest.
In the end, the butcher offered me a thawed twelve pounder, which I thought would suffice for my husband and three of his sports-obsessed buddies who’d flown down to St. Louis to catch college and pro football, hockey and baseball semi-finals. A pound a person rolls off the tongue nicely but, the reality is, it’s not enough turkey. There’s never enough turkey. Why is that?
Apparently turkey has some kind of dopamine trigger. That’s why you feel so good after you’ve eaten three heaping platefuls swimming in gravy, chased by pumpkin pie. Personally, I think it’s the company. I can’t remember a Thanksgiving dinner spent alone and for that I am always grateful. However, in Belgium, where Thanksgiving is not celebrated (it’s a “new world” custom), the weekend would come and go, with the only reminder being phone calls from back home and full reports of long weekend travels and events.
Thanksgiving is an important and universal family celebration here in the USA, as it is in Canada. For my husband and me, though, Thanksgiving means adding another chair to the table and including yet another friend at dinner. I’ve lost count of the number of meals where every chair in the house is pressed into service, squeezed around a collection of dining, kitchen, and folding card tables. Because we’ve lived far from our families for many years, we tend to celebrate with family, if possible, and with friends, always.
This weekend was no exception. On Friday, I cooked a small turkey full of stuffing, buttery mashed potatoes, cheesy Brussels sprouts, cubed turnips and sweet corn. Seven of us toasted Canadian thanksgiving, including our two kids who like nothing better than to clink glasses and say, “cheers”! As I looked around the table, I gave thanks, as always for health, family, and friends – oh yes, and for my one pound allotment of turkey!
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone!
Friday, October 2, 2009
Ode to the Roundabout
Do you think there were ever roundabouts in St. Louis, Missouri? I keep seeing a sign on a road near my house that ominously warns, “Roundabout ahead!” but I have never seen it. I’m looking for it, because I miss the roundabouts of Belgium. Pretty much every time two (or three or nine...) roads meet there, you’ll get a roundabout. They’re actually very efficient and virtually eliminate the need for traffic lights.
If you’ve never driven in one, I can tell you that it’s a bit intimidating at first. You see, as you enter the roundabout, you have to yield to the folks who are already in it. In Belgium, these traffic circles are sometimes three or four lanes wide so, while you’re patiently waiting for a break in the traffic, the pros will inch impatiently around you in a car about the size of the one your son built last night with his Lego blocks, and whip right across all the lanes to some tiny space that was not occupied in the middle lane. That middle lane means you’re planning to go around at least past the next exit. But, it could mean that they’ll whip right back across the three lanes to exit at the subsequent one!
My marriage almost ended on a roundabout. I hadn’t been married long. In fact, it was our honeymoon. We were vacationing in France and we had rented a car to drive from Paris to the landing beaches on the north coast. Well, now that I think about it, the marriage was a bit shaky after driving through Paris together in a rented car with five-speed standard transmission, which my new husband swore he could drive. There are no roundabouts in Paris but the minute you’re beyond one of the ancient “portes” of the city, boom, you hit one. As my husband tore through roundabout after roundabout with what appeared to be either a ton of confidence or a whole load of stupid, I realized that he thought that he had "the priority".
You see, in France, as in Belgium, the roads leading to the roundabouts all say, “You do not have the priority”. In similar circumstances anywhere in North America where two roads merge, there is just an upside down white triangle that says, “YIELD”. And, guess what? People do. It’s not hard. You see the sign and you want to live, so you slow down or stop and wait your turn.
Ahhh, now we come to the crux of it! There is a psychological difference between telling someone to yield and telling them they don’t have priority. Yield means give up. Yield means the other guy goes first. That doesn’t go over big everywhere. If you’ve ever skied in Europe, you’ll laugh remembering the line-ups, which are sheer chaos! If a skier spots so much as a hair’s-width of a space in front of you or beside you, they experience an all-consuming need to occupy it. They can’t help it. They’ll abandon friends and family, slinking ahead in the middle of conversations to claim the spot that was yielded or given up.
Maybe there’s a secret International Society for Sign Conformity, where designers talk about the need to coddle their fellow countrymen by acknowledging their priority – their right-of-way – everywhere else in life, except in one tiny little instance: the roundabout. You think they’re ignoring the signs, because of the confidence with which Europeans enter and exit these things. But, no, there’s an art to it! There is the gearing down and the glance to the left to gauge the exact moment to jump into it without actually stopping.
Now, if you’re a pedestrian ... good luck. It’s pretty much impossible to cross these rings-o’-death, as my friend Debbie called her favourite roundabout, the four-lane, seven-armed ring at Montgomery in Brussels. At least some of the big ones have pedestrian crossings underneath, but not Montgomery. Oh no, Montgomery has a six-lane highway speeding under it!
Still, pedestrian risks aside, I do love how quickly they move traffic. In St. Louis, there are so many traffic lights; sometimes they’re only a couple of hundred yards away from each other. So, I thought I’d write an Ode to Roundabouts (yes, I probably need to get a job).
Roundabout, roundabout,
How do I love thee!
You funnel us in, and
Right back out!
You pop up at every crossing,
But keep traffic moving in a rush.
You have no mercy
For drivers with slow nav’ systems,
Or rotten senses of direction!
You spin us around, and
Spit us back out,
On one of many octopus arms,
That lead to towns and trains and tall castles.
Roundabout! Roundabout!
How do I miss thee!
If you’ve never driven in one, I can tell you that it’s a bit intimidating at first. You see, as you enter the roundabout, you have to yield to the folks who are already in it. In Belgium, these traffic circles are sometimes three or four lanes wide so, while you’re patiently waiting for a break in the traffic, the pros will inch impatiently around you in a car about the size of the one your son built last night with his Lego blocks, and whip right across all the lanes to some tiny space that was not occupied in the middle lane. That middle lane means you’re planning to go around at least past the next exit. But, it could mean that they’ll whip right back across the three lanes to exit at the subsequent one!
My marriage almost ended on a roundabout. I hadn’t been married long. In fact, it was our honeymoon. We were vacationing in France and we had rented a car to drive from Paris to the landing beaches on the north coast. Well, now that I think about it, the marriage was a bit shaky after driving through Paris together in a rented car with five-speed standard transmission, which my new husband swore he could drive. There are no roundabouts in Paris but the minute you’re beyond one of the ancient “portes” of the city, boom, you hit one. As my husband tore through roundabout after roundabout with what appeared to be either a ton of confidence or a whole load of stupid, I realized that he thought that he had "the priority".
You see, in France, as in Belgium, the roads leading to the roundabouts all say, “You do not have the priority”. In similar circumstances anywhere in North America where two roads merge, there is just an upside down white triangle that says, “YIELD”. And, guess what? People do. It’s not hard. You see the sign and you want to live, so you slow down or stop and wait your turn.
Ahhh, now we come to the crux of it! There is a psychological difference between telling someone to yield and telling them they don’t have priority. Yield means give up. Yield means the other guy goes first. That doesn’t go over big everywhere. If you’ve ever skied in Europe, you’ll laugh remembering the line-ups, which are sheer chaos! If a skier spots so much as a hair’s-width of a space in front of you or beside you, they experience an all-consuming need to occupy it. They can’t help it. They’ll abandon friends and family, slinking ahead in the middle of conversations to claim the spot that was yielded or given up.
Maybe there’s a secret International Society for Sign Conformity, where designers talk about the need to coddle their fellow countrymen by acknowledging their priority – their right-of-way – everywhere else in life, except in one tiny little instance: the roundabout. You think they’re ignoring the signs, because of the confidence with which Europeans enter and exit these things. But, no, there’s an art to it! There is the gearing down and the glance to the left to gauge the exact moment to jump into it without actually stopping.
Now, if you’re a pedestrian ... good luck. It’s pretty much impossible to cross these rings-o’-death, as my friend Debbie called her favourite roundabout, the four-lane, seven-armed ring at Montgomery in Brussels. At least some of the big ones have pedestrian crossings underneath, but not Montgomery. Oh no, Montgomery has a six-lane highway speeding under it!
Still, pedestrian risks aside, I do love how quickly they move traffic. In St. Louis, there are so many traffic lights; sometimes they’re only a couple of hundred yards away from each other. So, I thought I’d write an Ode to Roundabouts (yes, I probably need to get a job).
Roundabout, roundabout,
How do I love thee!
You funnel us in, and
Right back out!
You pop up at every crossing,
But keep traffic moving in a rush.
You have no mercy
For drivers with slow nav’ systems,
Or rotten senses of direction!
You spin us around, and
Spit us back out,
On one of many octopus arms,
That lead to towns and trains and tall castles.
Roundabout! Roundabout!
How do I miss thee!
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