Personally, I am much more found of the English humor and I laugh my guts out for years now at the same stupid joke that I keep telling to French people, and the result it's always, always the same: a perplex look, pity in the eye of the person in front of me, a frown of the eyebrows that says "what's wrong with you?! is that even a joke?!"
Can't say it here because it needs my hands to be told properly, there's a gesture that makes it funny. ...Well, funny for me!
... And in case you also won't find it funny, it will be official that my humor's a little sick and I won't take the risk to find it out.
Anyway: we talk about French here.
As you probably do not know, in France they have invented a very, very practical way to rent bicycles.
In Paris for example, the mayor Berthrand Delanoë - mayor for many years now and a "beginner" as he was the first gay mayor - was the visionary that managed to install every 300 meters a place where you can rent a bicycle; he really is known as the gay Velib's mayor and his name is totally related to the joy of riding a rented bike; and you should remember this and his name cause it's involved in the story that lead me to the French humor.
All you need in order to rent a bike is a credit card and functional eyes and brain to read, process and apply the indications written on a screen of a pillar; functional eyes and brain cause the trick is that you can easily follow step by step what is written there, but once you get at the part where you have to introduce the code for your credit card, you will see that no matter how hard you press the buttons, there is nothing on the screen and so, nothing happens further in the indications to follow. And here is where the brain has to tell the eyes that there is something missing and you should check more in detail; and there!, you'll discover that the code you're pressing so hard that your fingertips started to bleed it is indicated with the little stars as usual, just above the place where you type it, in another screen, a very -tiny-well-hidden-from-a-lazy-eye-little-screen...
Now, if you are lucky enough not to have blocked your credit card by typing your code wrong for three times in so many desperate attempts, well, now you can follow the last steps indicated on the big screen, and there you go, before you know it, you are riding a bicycle on the streets of the most beautiful city in the world!
But!!! This can happen only after you have checked if the bicycle is OK, nothing missing, because part of the new habits that came with the new bicycles are vandalizing and even steeling them... well, that's another story.
Well, yesterday, as in every single day since we came from Tahiti, we took bikes to go at the cinema, my hubby and I. We are bicycles-cinema-people!
(No need to say that the system is close to perfection, you can check on Internet if or where there are bicycles available, in order to avoid walking around for 3 km for finding one, as especially in the summer they are almost impossible to find, everybody seem to be as found as them as we are. And if you were wondering, you pay considering the time that you spend on it, you can also have a daily, monthly or yearly subscription.)
The most difficult thing when riding a bike is avoiding the pedestrians as mostly the path for bikes is on the side of the sidewalk.
The bike ring is certainly not enough. You might need to shout.
And that's a pleasure when you can do it close to the pedestrian ear, so that he can jump in scare; sometimes the faces that they make are worthy the "Candid camera" show aut doing this you might also save his life in a future, as you make sure that you traumatize him enough to remember for the rest of his life that he's not alone in the world and there are also people and bikes and cars and... pigeons...
Once they go away and the bike path is free again, the late reactions are always similar and about three kinds: "Oh my God, you scared me!" or " F... away, you mother f..., there is the road for you, what the f...! or suicidal as they simply get back again on the bikes path.
Of course, the second category will go through life angry as they will continue to be screamed upon, cause they will never be able to acknowledge the signs on the ground or the little borders that makes that path a bicycle path. And if eventually they do, they will simply denied it.
But also in this second category there are the ones that have humor.
Yesterday while riding my half-an-hour-rented-bike, when observed a gentleman guiding himself exactly into my bike while trying to cross the street without looking right or left to make sure nothing is guiding itself into him, I gently screamed "Attention!"
He seemed to wake up from his moon-walk and acknowledge that cars and bikes are also running the road, and managed to push himself aside in time and with a kind of grateful look. But... a woman witness to the scene felt free to defend his right to suicide screaming back at me : "Shut the f... up, madame Delanoë!" , rudeness forgiven cause it's really funny. :)))
(In it's original French was "Ta gueule Madame Delanoë!" and it's equally funny if you remember what I told you about the gay-Velib-mayor Delanoë.)
PS: thanks to the Youtube, a video that I found in order to support my "Pro Velib" action.
