People here often ask if I've applied for French citizenship yet, but no one's really tried to convince me to make La Marseillaise my national anthem--until the other day at my local French employment agency. "But don't you feel French? Your children, they will be French," my conseiller said. "They will have la mentalité française--it is much different from la mentalité américaine, non?""Uh, yeah, kinda different," I managed, as my mind started to whirl in blue, blanc, rouge: "My kids are going to be French? How has this never occurred to me?" Suddenly I pictured skinny little bourgeois teenyboppers with tight jeans and Longchamp bags, strutting along in the shade of chestnut trees and giggling into cellphones. No after-school sports. Except maybe horseback riding. Or badminton. "Well, don't you feel French?" she was asking me again. I gulped. Thank God French has so many round-about ways to say non.
Madeleine LeBeau as Yvonne. [Online image] 1942.
