Vive la Difference

Question:  What's the difference between twelve and seventeen?

Answer: Enough to drive you to drink!

Recently, Tim and I took our two nieces, twelve and seventeen, to Paris for a few days.  While he worked, I got to show the girls around one of my favorite cities...and lose my mind in the process.

Our second night there, we took them for an after dinner walk up the Champs Elysees to see the Arch de Triumph.  Big mistake.

Oh, we saw the Arch, all right.  We also saw lots of lights, people, noise, and, as a special surprise, a riot.  Yea.

First, we thought it was a parade.  "Hey, look at those people with lights, coming up the street, singing.  Cool."

Oh. Wait.  Those aren't lights, they're torches, and they aren't singing, they are chanting (probably "Death to the Ugly Americans" and "Look! There they are!  Let's Get them!!!")  Except for the fact that there was no hunky Hugh Jackman, bald Anne Hathaway, or annoying little kid with a British accent leading them, it was just like being in Les Miserables.  Well, except that we didn't have any barricades to hide behind, only Tim.

Fortunately?, Unfortunately?,  right behind them came the riot police, all dressed in black, marching with a precision that would make Inspector Javert sit down and weep with pride (except all I could think of was the witch's army from The Wizard of OZ --Oh we oh, yo oh! Oh we oh, yo oh!--and my mother wondered why I had a hard time sleeping as a child!)

Now at my age, the inclination is to move away from the impending disaster, and try to avoid unpleasant situations like, oh, I don't know...jail?  In a foreign country. Where you only speak enough of the language to get a table at a restaurant and buy a really cool pair of shoes.  At seventeen, the inclination is apparently to run toward the men in black with sticks and guns chasing desperate people wielding fire. With a camera. In a foreign country.  Where you don't speak the language.

Fortunately, we must have looked enough like (sing along with me, those of you who are Sesame Street  fans) "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong..." because we were spared having to explain to my brother-in-law why his children had a prison record.

From that moment on, however, the seventeen-year-old was fascinated by the Champs Elysees. "Can we go there again? Have lunch there? Dinner? Walk? Shop? Try for another riot?"

The twelve-year-old could have cared less.  Champs Elysees??? Yawn.  Hey, but let's go back to the hotel and swim!!! Or how about having a bubble bath???  Oh, oh,  let's watch a movie!!!

Um, okay, cause these are all things we can't do at home, right?

No, no, really.  I can stream the movie Marie Antoinette from You Tube onto my ipod and we can huddle around the 4-inch screen and watch all 4,952 parts they've broken it into in just under 56 hours!  It'll be great!!!

And we can gorge ourselves on chocolate and macaroons, because it's only 11pm, so we'll only be up till around 5am with the sugar and caffeine buzz, but we weren't planning anything for tomorrow, right?  Except maybe a bubble bath and oh, I know, a swim!

Yeah.  Vive la difference.