K**** really is very wise. She kicked me out this afternoon. She is still not feeling well and I was hanging around the room brooding and basically I think it was kind of driving her crazy, so she kicked me out.
I decided to take a loop back through the Eiffel Tower and then down along the Seine toward the Concorde. It was sunny and fresh and the walk did me a world of good.
But sitting there in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower I started wondering how the French really feel about the big old thing. I mean yes, it is very impressive and tall and attracts millions of people every year and has come to be THE symbol of Paris, worked into every type of logo and t-shirt and gee-gaw that you see in the tourist shops…but really, it is just a big fancy erector set project that is always …THERE.
You can’t really go anywhere in Paris without seeing the damned thing. You’re on the Champs-Elysees and there it is; you are at the Louvre and look, there it is over there; you’re at the freaking Laundromat and there it is peaking over the rooftops like some big awkward cousin at Christmas…nice kid, grew really fast in the last year and now he never seems to go away.
I haven’t asked any French whether it bothers them or not, mainly because my French is a bit spotty and I may end up actually telling them that their socks are adorable or something else that will cause them to give me the classic blank French stare of miscomprehension.
Suffice it to say that the thing is really big and always there. Its not like they can fold the thing up and tuck it away for winter, or just haul it out on Bastille Day or something like that. No, they have to deal with it all the time…sometimes they can dress it up with lights and such, but that’s about it.
So be a nice boy and take your cousin outside, its just too close in here for such a big boy. C’mon cousin…watch your head there.
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