JOHN VC

Well, that does remind me. Everything reminds me. Pretty soon I won’t be
able to eat a bowl of wheaties without stopping to reminisce.

Anyway, there we were in 1969 starting off from Cambridge to do some field work in Greece, all 6 of us (Elizabeth was just 4 months old) and a young friend from LA stuffed into a camper van, and we had to make our first stop for supplies. Somewhere in northern France, in a cute little village, we pulled up outside of a cute little food shop. OK, I said to Judith, out you get. “But they won’t speak English. You go.” How is this, you were the one who took French in school, I took Spanish and German, remember? “No no no! YOU go.”

Poor thing. So in I went, and managed OK by pointing at things until I got to the butter. Not a word could I dredge up from my subconscious that the shop keeper recognized, and there wasn’t any butter visible for me to point to. In desperation I resorted to mime, first milking a phantom cow in mid air and then churning the invisible cream, feeling like a right idiot as people gaped at me. Finally, as I began spreading the ghost butter on my hand, pretending it was toast, the light dawned. “Ah!” cried the shop keeper and his wife and about six fascinated shoppers, “Le beurre! Ah oui! Le beurre! Donc, est la!” And so I returned triumphant to the car, with a proud smile, and handed in the bags.

“OK, you did great,” said Judith. “But I forgot one thing.” Oh, and what might that be? “We need some toilet paper.”

Guess who made THAT purchase.

(not)