It's a strange world, isn't it? (Chapter 927)

Never take a 12-year-old boy to a French restaurant (unless he’s actually French). My wife thought it would be a good idea yesterday to eat lunch at Madame Claude’s, a little Gallic eating place tucked away on a grimy side street in Jersey City. She wanted to go there because some of her friend’s art was hanging on its walls, as part of the annual Jersey City Artists’ Studio Tour. (I won’t go into why restaurants are included in a studio tour--because I don’t know why.)

When we entered, I noticed that there were no other children present, just a lot of people who looked more like they should be on the Left Bank than in post-industrial Jersey City. I heard a lot of foreign accents, more Russian than French, I think. We had obviously stumbled across the local center of intellectual expatriate life. I suddenly felt like a tourist in my own town.

A very French waitress showed us to a table and gave us menus.

There was indeed a lot of artwork on the walls, and my wife promptly got up and went around eyeballing it while standing over people’s tables to get a close up view. Being much too self-conscious to do that myself, I opened the menu. No pizza. No hamburgers or hot dogs. Fine by me, but I could tell that my son, whose favorite restaurant is Le Roi de Burger, was going to go hungry this afternoon.

The waitress came back to take our orders, but I could only shrug and gesture helplessly toward my wife, who was still interrupting conversations here and there as she sidled up to each table and stared at the wall.

Actually, none of us were particularly hungry, so when she rejoined us we decided to skip the meal and go straight to the dessert. I decided to order a fruit crepe. "What’s a crap?" my son demanded to know in a loud voice. I imagined all the Euro-yuppies staring and snickering. "It's sort of like a big Pop Tart," I hissed. "Now keep your voice down."

He decided, after perusing the Franglais menu, to order the only thing he recognized: a glass of lemonade. When it arrived, he was surprised to find that it actually was what it purported to be: a drink freshly squeezed from real lemons, not the frozen, sugar-sweetened facsimile he’s used to. "This tastes awful," he said.

My wife suggested he add some sugar to it and try again. After dumping in half the sugar bowl and maniacally stirring the drink--ice cubes clinking loudly--for several minutes, he decided it was drinkable enough to take a few sips.

"I want to go home," he announced in a loud voice, just as our crepes arrived. "Just be patient," my wife advised. "Want a bite?"

He made a face and repeated that he wanted to go home. "Look at that," I said, pointing to a mechanical fish sculpture that hung over our table. "What do you think of that?"

The fish machine had a crank attached, and my son reached up to turn it. The fish's tail swished back and forth and its head bobbed up and down. Despite the turning gears, it was remarkably quiet, and he amused himself with it while we wolfed down our crepes.

We paid and left. I'm sure they weren't too sorry to see us go. A bientôt? Non.