Smoking Lessons: What Being a French HS Student Really Taught Me

“Voulez-vous-en?” I asked, extending a cigarette from the package like I had seen in the movies. I had been a foreign exchange student in France for three months, and I was starting to fit in, or so it seemed.

My classmates, seated on the bench in the high school's courtyard, took the Gitanes expertly between their fingers and blew smoke in oval rings that floated over their heads like carcinogenic halos.

They were experts at the exhale. This made sense----smoking wasn't illegal or even taboo, despite the fact that we were only 16 and still on school property.

So smoke on, mes amis.

No one seemed to notice that I never actually inhaled. Instead, I held the cigarette limply in my right hand. I then poised the left on my hip like Sylvie, my chiffon-scarfed classmate who had clearly been raised on Elle and champagne.

The cigarette was a prop.

Or rather, a barter----my tobacco for their conversation practice. Shivering on the bench, I studied their lips, translating in my head.

Bernard, the class math whiz, rambled on in his southern French accent about his eventual entry into the Concours Générale, a national competition for upperclassmen. “I think I really stand a chance,” he said between puffs.

I was finally starting to understand after month of floundering. “The teacher says I am le meilleur,” he continued with a confident use of the French superlative: "the best."

I rolled my eyes and made a mental note to look up “jackass” in the dictionary for future use. For four years, I had hunched naively over verb charts and vocab lists only to decode schoolyard strutting, a language that needs no words.

I looked around at my classmates for confirmation of my disgust, but their eyes were not rolling. Instead, I saw only nods of agreement. He was, in fact, “the best” according to every test we’d taken. They saw no need to disagree. The valedictorian at my hometown high school would have been publicly shunned for confidence like that, but the students here accepted Bernard’s smug superiority. They just kept chatting and blowing smoke rings.

What about the healthy dose of self-deprecation I had been raised on?! What about hiding your grades so you don’t hurt others’ feelings?!

What about the rosy-cheeked “Aw shucks...” that must follow all compliments?

The faded pictures in my French textbooks at home had shown men in berets, eating

escargot at rattan cafe tables. There were photos of kids sailing miniature boats in the Luxembourg Gardens, their parents eating baguettes on the lawn beside them. Lots of Eiffel Towers.

That was what the authors of Bon Voyage! Level 1 touted as “culture.” But, until that day, I hadn’t realized that it went much deeper than that. I was an American and, try as I might, my knee-jerk reactions would forever be different from Bernard’s and Sophie’s.

I had consumed my own culture since birth, not knowing I had other options.

My cultural norms, I found, were revealed only by contrast, a position the French seemed designed to fill. Case in point:

At Sophie’s house one day, I was greeted by a nude painting in the entryway. The model’s nipples seemed to follow me as I walked around the room, making it impossible to look away. My peers walked by without even glancing her direction. I later found out the painter was Sophie’s father and the model was her mother.

My Puritanical mind went reeling.

Weeks later, walking into Bernard’s house after school, I was struck by the dated, flowery couch and the faded print on the wall. Isn't his dad a doctor? Couldn’t they afford a decorating makeover?

I think their frugality offended my capitalism.

At the dinner table another night, I reached for a second slice of my host mother’s glazed apple tart. “You've put on a few kilos since you arrived. I think you’re a bit overweight now,” she said nonchalantly.

I put my plate down, shocked, and guiltily returned my slice to the tray. Such things were not said. Americans’ comments on weight are limited to “You look great” and “No, that dress doesn’t make your butt look big.” How dare she state the obvious.

Culture is a rather slow osmosis....

...but over the course of my year-long stay, I did manage to pick up a few of their customs: wearing chiffon scarves, baking apple tarts, cussing with native precision. More importantly, I pretend-smoke more convincingly than anyone I know.

But the deeper truths are still a work in progress.

A few weeks ago, I met my daughter’s new teacher, a jolly, burly man in his mid-forties. “Hello,” he said, “I’m Mr. E.”

“Hi,” I said, pushing my daughter toward him. “This is Zara. I’m sure you two are going to have a great year.”

“We are,” he said, crouching down to give my daughter a high five. “I'm a great teacher.”

I stared, dumbfounded. He was going off script. Could he do that? Compliment himself in broad daylight? To a complete stranger?

“I am. I’m a great teacher,” he continued. “I’m not good at a lot of things, but I’m really good at this.”

I thought about his response for days. Where were his standardized test scores and licensures and parent evaluations? Where were his "Most Influential Educator" pins and hand-painted apple knick-knacks?

What gave him the right to claim greatness?

I had no evidence to refute his claims, so I eventually gave in to admiration----with a tinge of jealousy. After all, he had channeled his inner Bernard when I have yet to find mine.

I know I will never be French and can’t erase years of conditioning, but I hope one day I can say, “I’m good at this” about something, without shame. I want to make a bold claim of greatness in public at least once before I die. I think everyone deserves that.

But if I can’t manage to do that, Plan B is to hang a nude self-portrait on my nursing home wall.

Either way, I’ll be turning heads.