L'amour est….

Paris, the city of love. When people think of incredibly romantic destinations they would like to visit, you can bet that Paris appears somwhere on the list. We have all heard about le French lover, ze French kiss (cannot tell you how many times French guys have tried to sell that one to me!) and just generally the French's reputation for being amazing lovers (yes I can confirm that one). But what is it about France and the French which makes them such experts in love. Over the years I have come to appreciate exactly quite how much love forms part of the French culture. Indeed, the business of love seems to be a national pasttime.

When I first arrived in France (after the Eurasmus year that is) and I started teaching, one of the first things the young 8 year old girls I used to teach would ask me was "Mademoiselle Rose, est-ce que tu as une amoureux?". Translation: "Miss Rose do you have someone you are in love with?". Ok, vocabulary problem here. I was not being asked if I had a boyfriend (although it was necessarily implied) I was being asked, in my mind, whether I was in fact in love with someone. If someone from England had asked me the question, even if at the time I had had a boyfriend, I would have asked "what's love got to do with it? So far he is a nice guy, we get on and as for the rest we'll see what happens!". Of course when you start dating someone there is inevitably the stage when you feel all "loved up" and you say to your friends "oh I am so in love!" but what you mean is that you are "in lust". Being asked whether I am in fact in love with someone requires a greater level of reflection as to what being in love actually means. I think the whole world has spent many years trying to answer that one! Of course, in the minds of these sweet French children having a boyfriend = being in love and therefore my boyfriend (had I had one at the time) would have been my "loved one".
I quite truthfully told the children that no, Miss Rose did not have an "amoureux".
"Oh" said the little girl "parceque moi j'en ai un. Il est en cinqième". I'm sorry, what?? Not only did this girl apparently have a boyfriend, whom she was in love with, but in fact that said boy was in fith year in France (year 8 in England, i.e. that he was around 13 years old).

Yes it is true that when I was little (5 to be precise) I had boyfriends. At one point I even had two (scandalous I know), one who I chased around the playground and another who let me kiss him. The first boyfriend didn't let me kiss him, only chase him around, hence the need for the second boyfriend. I must have used up my boyfriend luck having two boyfriends at once because for the rest of my childhood I never had an actual boyfriend. In fact the next boyfriend I did have was when I was 15 years old.

I'm sure that this young girl was just referring to a boy she quite liked and who quite liked her and that was where it ended but I found it interesting the way she used the term "amoureux". When I speak to my young cousins on the subject of boyfriends they usually say that they fancy someone but he doesn't fancy them, or vice-versa, or that they have a boyfriend, or that they play kiss and chase with the boys they like. I don't think "love" comes into it whatsoever!

Another example, with the same class of girls, was when I was teaching them things they could say in response to the question "What do you do at the weekend?". Again, another of my 8 year olds raised her hand and said "Miss Rose, comment tu dirai "diner en amoureux"?". "Why?" I asked, wondering when and how this child went to romantic restaurants with her lover. "Parce que c'est ça que je fais", she said. Now I'm fairly sure that this question was asked for the benefit of her friends so that she could show off but I still found the idea quite amusing. This little girl's preoccupation was to know how to say "I have a romantic dinner" not "I play with my dolls" or "I play with my skipping rope" or even "I go horseriding" (all of which were subsequently mentioned but ranked lower down!).

The thing that struck me most however was an incident which took place after playtime one day. I just near the classroom door two boys were having a fight, encouraged by their classmates naturally. I managed to break off the fight, send the other children into the classroom and put the two boys on opposite sides of the classroom facing the wall. Once I had got the children to calm down and had set them their work I went over and spoke to the boys individually. "Ok Pierre, what happened".
"Jacombette" Pierre said in a muffled voice.
"What? I didn't understand"
"Jacques m'embête".
"Ok so why does Jacques annoy you?" immediately beginning to think about bullying issues.
Huff.
"Pierre, if you want me to help you then you're going to have to talk to me"
Glare.
"What exactly does Jacques do to annoy you?"
Another huff.
"Pierre!"
"C'est parce que lui il est amoureux de Marion et moi aussi"
Ah, now we have got to the heart of the matter. These two 9 year old boys were fighting over Marion, a blue eyed, blonde haired girl who was very pretty, very aware of the effect her charm had on the boys, and totally not interested in any of them.
Further questioning of Jacques confirmed Pierre's story.

Again, when my young cousin was nine years old, his reply when asked what he thought of the opposite sex would have been "yuck! Girls? Yuk!". He most certainly would not have got into a fight over a girl. Argument over which is the best player in Man U, yes. Argument over a girl, no!
Which is why I was quite astonished that these boys were fighting over a girl. For goodness sake I don't think I've ever seen grown men fighting over a woman nevermind young boys!

In France, love is a part of life. Without love, you don't seem to be living. So for those couples who may be discovering Paris over the holiday season, if in France you feel there is more romance, more poetry, more love in the air in general, that is because it is the case. As I've discovered, the French are such experts in love because, as it would seem, they start'em young!