Coupe-chevaux

Stardate: senior year of high school. Scene: my French teacher asks me to describe someone, or myself, or something. I say something to the effect of “and he has short brown hair” and she stops me. “You mean he has short brown hair,” she says in French.

“Yes?”

“You said, il a des chevaux courts et bruns.”

“Mais, non. Je ne dirais jamais cela.”

She was not happy that I was being sassy. Not as angry as the time that I prevented her from making us a tarte au citron because I had to be an asshole and be ALLERGIC TO ALMONDS (the nerve of me!), but still fairly ticked off.

Moral of the story: enunciate well if you are trying to articulate the difference between cheveux (hair) and chevaux (horses). Case in point: getting a haircut.

It did occur to me that getting a haircut in a land where my ability to describe things precisely is compromised might very well be a supremely bad idea. Then again, I had really just the one criterion: shorter, s’il vous plaît. Plus, I picked what seemed like a decent salon*, and the stylists had good hair, and there was a big fat dog that sort of lay on the ground as I was getting my brushing done, surrounded by a nest of my split ends. What did I have to lose?

About an inch and a half, it turned out. And my horses are looking splendid.

*Meaning one that wasn’t far and would give me 20% off for being a student.