Speaking of needing a moment alone with a country...
Everything we saw around us would remind her of something she saw in Iceland when she was on vacation there last week. She had a sip of beer and then talked about how she had a beer back in Iceland. I asked her if it tasted anything like the beer she was drinking now, and is that why she brought it up? And she said, "No, it was just a beer. The beer reminded me that I drank beer in Iceland." She then pointed at her sweater and revealed that it was bought in Iceland. We passed postcards in shops, and she informed me that (shockingly) they do in fact sell Iceland postcards in Iceland. We were in Paris at the moment, and she thought it important to tell me (lest I think otherwise) that, unlike these Parisian postcards, the Iceland postcards didn't have the Eiffel Tower on them. If it drizzled, the drops of rain would be compared to the size of the raindrops in Iceland. The five words she knew in Icelandic were unfavorably compared to the three words she had learned in French, and her understanding of the Icelandic governmental system (gleaned from about four days spent there) was used to give comparative analysis of the French governmental system (the understanding of which was gleaned from about two days spent in Paris).
Anyway, I met Mrs. Iceland when I was staying in a youth hostel in Paris back in December when I got so upset that I had to leave the country for a good ol' fashioned mope. She was exactly my age and, when compared with our other roommate who on our first night went on a tirade against toilet paper, she seemed relatively normal. Sure, I said. Sure I'll go touring with you tomorrow. I figured maybe this trip didn't have to be all about moping and feeling sorry for myself (though there'd still be plenty of time for that), and maybe I could even make a new friend.
Though I guess I should've taken the hint when she kept demanding that I do a British accent for her. She was Australian and for some reason was obsessed with the fact that I now live in England. "Speak in an English accent!" she'd shriek at me. "COME ON, SPEAK IN AN ENGLISH ACCENT!" The first few times I laughed it off and said that I couldn't do a good one. But then after about the tenth time she asked me I began to wonder if this girl had escaped from some sort of a treatment program for people with perverted obsessions with poorly done foreign accents. By the twentieth time I was contemplating suicide. I shrugged it off though and still agreed to spend the day seeing the sights of Paris with her, embracing the excuse to stop lying face-down on the bed and acting almost paralytic with sadness.
Spending the day with Mrs. Iceland turned out to be quite the eye-opener. I guess the major lesson I learned is that never, in ANY circumstances, tell people that you teach. I've learned that people take the line, "I'm a teacher" as an invitation to have explosive diarrhea of inane questions that would make even your 6th graders think, "What a retard." Like, it's to the point where I would now prefer to tell people I have a thriving career as a rapist, because then at least people would leave me well the fuck alone.
I guess I should have been relieved that for once this girl was expressing an interest in something other than my ability to do a fake English accent or the noble nation of Iceland, but in reality I just wanted to stuff a rag into her mouth. A rag that was attached to a Molotov cocktail. The soundtrack of Paris was replaced by this girl's constant stream of "What is that? What is this? Where are we? How do you say French fries in French? How do you say toilets in French? How do you say how do you say in French? Comment d---wait, how did it go? Comment dit-on France in French? Comment dit-on I like in French? Okay, j'aime Iceland. Is that how you say I like Iceland in French? How do you say fjords in French?"
She asked for a steady stream of vocabulary in French, and for some reason understood only by Mrs Iceland and God, she felt it necessary to specify "in French" at the end of every request. As though I'd suddenly assume she were asking me about Hebrew if she didn't clarify each and every goddamn time.
"Where are we again? Wait, where's that? What is that? How do you say Notre Dame in French? Notre Dame? That's weird."
Finally I suggested we visit the Sainte-Chapelle, as I had fond memories of the windows when I last visited a few years ago.
And then this girl came up with a winner: "Tell me the history of Sainte-Chapelle." What? Like, what about it? "Yeah, just tell me the history." Um...
I told her I didn't remember, that last time I was there about about four years ago. She then changed her question: "Oh. Then how much did the entry cost?" I reminded her that, again, it was four years ago and I didn't remember. And she just about had a stroke, so shocked was she. How could I not remember how much something cost four years ago???? THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!!
Yes, because what I remember about vacations is ticket prices.
I guess the clincher though was sitting at a sidewalk cafe, the kind of place where you pay 8 euro for a hot chocolate. Trying to make conversation, and perhaps sensing that I had long since checked out of the conversation, she asked me a question about religion. "Tell me the difference between Islam and Christianity," she asked.
Hmm. I honestly told her I was happy to talk about religion, but I didn't know where to even begin with that kind of question. Is there anything specific she wanted to know? Could she narrow down her question and then maybe I could help her out?
She carefully considered my request, and then asked, "So is Abraham a prophet in Islam and also in Christianity?" I answered her question by backing up a little, explaining what a prophet is, and then answering that, yes, Abraham is a prophet in both.
And she responded by nodding sagely and saying, "Ah, so they're the same religion then?"
I got a little flustered, "Well, not exactly. They have some things in common, and they both like Abraham, but they're also quite different."
"Right," she argued, "but if they both have Abraham as a prophet then they're the same religion, yeah?"
"Um. I..."
I guess now would also be a good time to point out that Mrs Iceland was the daughter of Methodist ministers.
At this point I gave up. You have a creepy fascination with English accents, you basically want to have sex with Iceland, you ask stupid questions, and now you think that having anything in the middle part of a Venn Diagram makes both sides of the Venn Diagram the exact same thing. Learn the concept of Venn Diagrams, lady, and then we'll talk. So fuck you, Mrs Iceland. We're done. Tomorrow I'd rather take a gamble on Miss "Toilet Paper is the Devil's Work."
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