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- taking chuck palahniuk's 'rant' as my plane read without having read it before, getting about halfway through, spending the rest of the flight low-key anxious about the obscenity laws at my destination
- affecting a vaguely texan accent in ireland because i was worried my newfoundland accent would come across as fake irish
- every church youth group conference as a teen. just all of them. too not-christian for pentecostal mindfuckery
- losing literal hours in toronto because i kept getting convinced i'd taken the wrong train and going back the way i came only to find out i'd been on the right train the first time
- falling asleep on a plane, waking up with my head on the shoulder of the stranger next to me, realizing i drooled on his windbreaker and trying to figure out if i should try to gently wipe it off or just hope it air-dried before he woke up
- cleaning guy in my hotel hit on me so i spent the last three days of my fieldwork trip staying out for like 12 hours a day just to make sure i missed him, and whenever i was in public spaces in the hotel i would call my own voicemail and pretend i was having an important conversation with someone that i couldn't interrupt
- prelude to the next story: the first time i was in quebec (over 20 years before the next story takes place) i wanted to order hawaiian pizza but didn't know how to say hawaiian, so i thought i would be safe and order a pizza 'à l'ananas et au jambon' but i mixed up 'jambon' and 'jambe.' so i ordered a pizza with pineapple and leg
- so (again, 20+ years later) i am visiting quebec for the first time since then and my french has only gotten worse. i get off at a bus station in gatineau that has a coffee shop. i've been practicing my incredibly basic coffee order for the whole morning because i can NOT have another leg pizza incident haunting me for two more decades
- i head into the bathroom first and the toilet is flooding. really flooding. like inches of water already on the floor. so i run back out and run up to the counter and ask if the employee speaks english, and she says no, and i am still stuck in ordering coffee mode and am struggling to form a sentence that isn't "a large coffee with milk, please" and the water situation has me panicked. so i tell her
- "il y a de l'eau dans les toilettes"
- "there is water in the toilet"
- and eventually i just say "beaucoup. beaucoup d'eau" and she goes to check the bathroom and i slink off. without a fucking café au lait
- "there is water in the toilet"
- "il y a de l'eau dans les toilettes"
- i head into the bathroom first and the toilet is flooding. really flooding. like inches of water already on the floor. so i run back out and run up to the counter and ask if the employee speaks english, and she says no, and i am still stuck in ordering coffee mode and am struggling to form a sentence that isn't "a large coffee with milk, please" and the water situation has me panicked. so i tell her
- so (again, 20+ years later) i am visiting quebec for the first time since then and my french has only gotten worse. i get off at a bus station in gatineau that has a coffee shop. i've been practicing my incredibly basic coffee order for the whole morning because i can NOT have another leg pizza incident haunting me for two more decades
sep 25 2022 ∞
jan 8 2026 +
jan 8 2026 +