by Ric Erickson

Number 1.28 - Metropole Paris - Paris:- Monday, 2. September 1996:- Believe me, I don't want to be where I am today. The drive back from south of the border is really uphill all the way - look at the map! - and here is what you get today. Here and this.

'La Rentrée' means re-opening of schools, courts of law and parliament, according to my dictionary. No courts of law that have been closed for summer, and certainly no parliament in this country is going back to work today; but every schoolkid is going to be getting back into the grind towards becoming a Nobel Prize winner.

The whole school system is set up with this goal in mind and every parent in the country, whether they believe in it or not, is bullied into pushing their kids in this direction.

To say that this creates a lot of unhappy people of all ages is an understatement of monumental character. The whole idea is to drive kids like common slaves towards goals that are flatly unobtainable to all but a very few - and I can't think of who the sadist might be who got a whole nation into this racket.

If you have ever worked at the bottom of the ladder in some country that was driven by capitalist frenzy, you will know what hard mean labor is - but very few people in our funky western civilization experience this sort of thing anymore - except for schoolkids in France.

No wonder it is difficult to have a good time on holidays around the French. Most of them never come down from the high anxiety of the schoolyear and what they don't lose in one summer they carry over into the following term - and the ante goes up and up, until the all-dreaded BAC.

It is one very unfunny thing about France and I find it hard to remember anything pleasant about it. The odd thing is, my kids don't seem to mind. They go a bit wacko if they aren't being ordered around by drill sergeants all day, and treat parental kindness with utter contempt and total disregard for our fragile sanity. It is not funny at all.

The organization was invented by Kafka. If you want to buy a whole term's worth of school lunches you do it at our village city hall. If you want to just buy occasional meals, you have to go and buy individual tickets from a lady in a little cubbyhole office at the school and wait while she spreads the town gossip to the two other moms that are ahead of you. And when it is your turn the conversation goes like this:

Me: 'Ten tickets, please.'
The Lady: 'That's eighty francs you know.'
Me: 'Yes, I know, here's a hundred.'
The Lady: 'Are you sure that was ten tickets?'
Me: 'Sure I'm sure.'
The Lady: 'They are eight francs each.'
Me: 'I know. Here's a hundred francs.'
The Lady: 'Do you mind if I give you four five franc pieces back. I'm out of tens and notes.'
Me: 'Sure, that's fine.'
The Lady: 'What's the child's name?'
Me: 'Er, what difference does it make?'

And that was a mistake and I got out of there twenty minutes later, out past 13 other moms waiting for tickets.

And today, I think I have to take each of them to a different school, and they both have to be there at the same time.

It's the rentrée. Again. If I make it this week, saner tales next week at this location.