Through Others’ Eyes
Saturday, March 2nd, 2002In the hotel in Paris at breakfast one morning. I struck up a conversation with a woman that wasn’t speaking French to the waiter and she had avoided talking to me. I guessed that she might be English or Scandinavian and most Sacandinavians speak English. It turned out she was from Poland but knew English very well. She had avoided talking to me because she thought I was French. When I started talking to her and finally told her I was from the states, she said “no wonder your English accent is so good-I thought you were French!”
She was on her way to a business meeting in Lancaster PA. In her slender 30’s she had short cropped blond hair and was wearing a yellow sweater and tan slacks. She said that on a trip to NY several years ago, she was struck by how “big” many American were and she made clear that she meant fat. She guessed that it was because they didn’t get enough “motion.” It is interesting to see ourselves through other’s eyes. I tried to explain “jet lag” the lag part being the most difficult.
Later, an English woman in the hotel in Bayonne said that when she had visited NY several years ago she was shocked at how people, who were dressed up in suits and other nice clothing, were wearing ugly sneakers and walking so fast down the street. We tried to tell her we didn’t find “sneakers” ugly and that when I worked I wore nice shoes to work and carried my tennis shoes in a bag that I then used when walking to/from the car. But she said there were “nice” comfortable shoes you could wear out on the street and she held up her foot whereupon there was a nice black walking shoe.
Zoe