Bon Appétit!

I think I have mentioned that the kids have both become much more adventurous in their eating during their stay in France. Some has been by design: we have forced the kids to go to la cantine 3 out of the 4 school days each week. And while at first there were some complaints and general resistance, by the end I have been scrambling to try to get recipes for Cordon Bleu etc so the kids can keep eating in the fashion to which they have grown accustomed.

Some of the kids new-found adventurousness has been not by design but by pure old-fashioned stubbornness. That is, before coming to France, Jasper would tell us (in order to get us off her back for being a picky eater), “When I am in France, I will eat all sorts of new things.” And, as is very much like her, she has stuck to her word.

And lastly, some of the adventurousness has been just plain strange. Maddox “I wish I could keep a hammer in my ear” Schaller is nothing if not the king of non-sequiturs. It turns out this ability jumps to food preferences as well. A few nights ago, apropos of nothing, Maddox asked, “Are dogs made of meat?” And after we cautiously answered that they were, he happily said “Maybe someday we can eat a dead dog for dinner.”

I explained that we probably wouldn’t. That dog is served only in parts of Asia, but not typically considered appropriate in North America and Europe. Meanwhile, Mark told Maddox the story about how, while traveling in China, his father was once famously served a dinner dish with a large cooked horse penis draped across the top. I’m glad Mark distracted him with the horse penis; I am not sure I could have possibly explained why lamb and veal and rabbits (to name a few cute animals) are OK to eat, but dogs are not.

Even though the French don’t eat dogs, they are famous for their Great Food. And while I knew this before coming here, and I knew that lots of people come to France to eat; until living here I never really appreciated how deeply rooted food is in the culture here. And I am not just talking about having food holidays (such as Le Chandeleur – the crêpe holiday, I blogged about early on in our stay), which I love. It goes deeper than that.

Maybe most emblematic of the importance and appreciation of food here is the phrase Bon appétit! If you think about it, there is no English equivalent for wishing a person an enjoyable meal. (The closest – but so much coarser – might be “dig in”.) And people say it, and mean it, ALL the time. We have regularly had strangers delightedly say “Bon appétit!” when they have seen us having a little family picnic.

My favorite example of this happened months ago. Mark and I were hanging out near a playground while the kids played. He and I were having a little fruit and nut snack at the side of the road while we waited. A pack of adolescent boys came running by (they were all on some type of team and looked to be doing a practice run of some sort). They looked over and cheerily shouted, “Bon appétit!” Seriously. Just about each and every one wasted some of their much-needed oxygen wishing us a “Bon appétit!” It was so sweet, and came as such a shock. In North America one would expect, at best, sullen silence and at worst some sort of rude comment from a pack of adolescent boys. But here, they spy our pathetic little road side snack (fruit and nuts! – a real French person would have bread and duck confit and a small pique-nique sized bottle of wine) and cheerily shout to us to enjoy ourselves.

If I were a worthy Francophile at this point I would be able to wax poetic about the cheeses and the wines available here. All I can say is, “Oh, les vaches!” (Holy cow!) Les fromages! Les vins! I know I will miss what is available here. So many varieties and so cheap. We have been pretty provençal about our approaches to wine. We have mostly enjoyed the ever-present (and so VERY cheap) local rosé wines.

Exploring cheeses here has been pretty fun, though occasionally irritating. The irritations have been quite specific to one woman (we call her the Cheese Nazi) who runs a great cheese stand at the weekly Cotignac market. Until recently, every single time we went to order cheese she gave us a long tirade (in French, of course) about how to store the cheese (never in plastic), how to eat the cheese (always take it out of the fridge 1 to 1½ hours prior to eating it), etc etc. And then at the end of the tirade (some of which I would understand, some of it went over my head, especially in the beginning) she would wish us a Good Vacation. She did this each and every week for months and months. Finally I got savvy enough, both in terms of what she was going to say, as well as in my ability to express myself in French, that I was able to cut off her tirade by ordering in a specific way. I think she finally got that she could trust me with her cheese! And, in the last couple of months, she finally FINALLY stopped wishing us a “Bonne Vacance!”

One thing the Cheese Nazi never lectured to us about was the sacred way of cutting cheese. I think this is ONLY because we never served cheese to her, or I am sure she would have had a lot to say about it. You see, it turns out there is a particular way to cut each and every type of cheese. It depends on a variety of factors including the size of the wheel (both width and height) of cheese, the firmness, the type of rind, etc. It is too difficult for me to try to describe the different shapes one makes while cutting. Lets just say it is almost always different and that the rules can be pretty baffling.

So, today is our last day as residents in Cotignac. Tomorrow we hit the road for our European tour (Switzerland for 3 days, Paris for 3 days, Bruges for 2 days, and then one last night in Amsterdam). Mark and I enjoyed one final long leisurely lunch today on the main Cours here in Cotignac. There is something really nice about sharing a pichet de rosé under a blue Provençal sky. It was a very nice finish to an amazing 6 months!

Once we get back home we may have one or two blogs in us about our European tour... Check back in if you want to!

Au revoir!

Secret waterfall redux

I won't be offended if you think that, little by little, we're going insane. I just glanced back at the stuff we've been blogging about recently, and it occurs to me that a superficial skim might suggest a family increasingly unhinged. Mark unselfconsciously flouncing around town wearing a little girl's wristwatch and a sarong; Quincy claiming to hear the serenading songs of birds all night long; Maddox speaking in surrealistic riddles; and so forth. Even the recent photos may suggest that we've succumbed to some strange madness that drives us to obsessively sculpt towering toothsome concrete rabbits and to gaze oddly at our reflections in sheared-off auto parts deep within the Provençal woods. It's like we're no longer just a family on sabbatical, but are instead minor characters in a Werner Herzog movie, or Alice in Wonderland, or Apocalypse Now. You might half expect Quincy to start blogging about the sudden appearance of a strung-out ghost of Dennis Hopper in the vine-grown ruins of an ancient olive mill; or for me to report on how, during a recent trip to the market to buy cherries and flan we encountered the lumbering form of Marlon Brando sitting in the shadows of a cheese shop reading the poetry of T.S. Eliot and telling far-out tales of gardenias and riverbanks and razorblades and snails. (The horror. The horror.)

So, yeah, I won't be offended if, while reading our blog, you're reminded of that famous remark by Francis Ford Coppola: "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane."

If not for the bits about being in the jungle and having too much money, that remark might be an accurate assessment of our lives. Oh and also the bit about going insane. Because, despite appearances, I assure you: We still have all our marbles. In fact, our lives are so boringly normal here that it's hard to find anything to blog about.

But, while I cannot report on any torrential rain of madness, I can tell you about something that Jasper and I did a couple of days ago that found us dropping down through a sort of rabbit-hole and plunging into the (non-metaphorical) heart of darkness.

I wrote once before about the secret waterfall and the caves. What I didn't mention was that, in addition to the big easy entrance into the short tunnel we explored already, there's another cave entrance that I'd previously ignored because it's just a little hole in the side of the cliff and I wasn't sure I could even fit through it. On a return visit, I just had to try. And I fit. And so did Jasper and Maddox too. And, once through, we were inside a substantial tunnel just goes and goes. We explored it for a little ways – far enough for the dry tunnel to start getting damp as it bore back darkly through the limestone. Having gone that far, Jasper and I were keen to return and explore it as far as we possibly (or safely) could.

We did so as soon as Quincy's brother Kelin and his family arrived in town. It was the perfect opportunity because (as those of you who subscribe to Nature, Geology, and the Journal of Geophysical Research already know) Kelin knows a thing or two about water and rocks and geomorphology. And because one of his girls (Teagan) is 10.

"I'm not going in there!" Teagan exclaimed when, after hiking out of town and climbing up to the waterfall, she saw the narrow slot in the rock that we'd need to shimmy through.

But she did. And with Jasper leading the way with the chirpy enthusiasm of an eager mole, the four of us plunged onward and gently downward through the darkness. Despite her vocal misgivings, I think there was only one moment when Teagan had any real regrets about being there. It was the moment when, as we dropped to our knees to get through a particularly low passage, our headlamps suddenly illuminated a large dense ragged-looking spider web right in front of our faces, occupied by a burly spider the size of my hand. We quickly scuttled on, and on, pausing occasionally so that Kelin could point out interesting features created by the interaction of gravity, water, and calcium carbonate. Because, you know, when you're hunched back-breakingly over inside a damp lightless passageway deep inside the earth, and you've just been nose-to-nose with a spider that looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings, nothing beats an impromptu geology lesson. Seriously.

Eventually, Jasper yelled out that she saw light ahead. And moments later we reemerged blinkingly, along with some gently flowing groundwater, in a familiar spot along a tiny road on the upper edge of the village.

And then we turned around and plunged into the heart of darkness again, back the way we came. Not because we were so especially keen to blunder once more into the webs of blind and bloated spiders, but because we were keen to take a bracing swim in the churning gray-green pool underneath the secret waterfall where we began.

Yeah, I know: It's not exactly a paranoid florid fantasy of razorblades and snails and Marlon Brando in his pajama pants. But it's all I got.

Whenever Maddox says something he says something hilarious, but whenever Mark says something he just reveals himself (again) to be kind of a chump

A couple of weekends ago, we went on a lovely little family hike through the forests and the hills just outside of town, during which we ate a picnic lunch under the warm midday sun and examined butterflies and bugs among the flowers and the rocks. Later that evening, as I was putting Maddox to bed, I was reflecting on the day's events. "I really enjoyed that hike with Quincy and Jasper today," I said. And Maddox replied: "I wish I could keep a hammer in my ear; or a flashlight."

Naturally, I take delight in his gift for non sequitur. It is a gift he shares generously with the rest of us at home. At school, though, he remains linguistically tightfisted: He pretty much doesn't say a word. He's got friends aplenty, it seems, but – even with those who speak some English – he appears to communicate primarily through a series of cryptic peeps and squeaks. And, although he is happy to say "Au revoir" to his teacher (Madame Blanc) at the end of the day, he refuses to say anything else to her. Not even "Bonjour." At first we attributed this to second-language shyness. But it's been going on for more than five months now and I'm pretty sure that, for Maddox, the refusal to greet Madame Blanc has simply resolved into a matter of principle.

There was a time, almost two months ago, when we tried to bribe him into saying "Bonjour" to Madame Blanc. He resisted, but did suggest a sort of compromise: "How about if I say 'Salut' instead?" We said sure; although, in hindsight, it was obviously a set-up for comical disaster. Madame Blanc is famously severe and formal in her demeanor, whereas "Salut" is about the most casual sort of greeting going. It's the kind of thing you might say to your buddies at a bar – a sort of French equivalent of "Howdy!" or "Whassup!" or "Yo! Yo! How's it hanging, bro!" It's not something that kids often say to grown-ups. And it's definitely not something Madame Blanc expects from her 4-year olds. Anyway, when Maddox got to school that day he ran up to Madame Blanc and yelled out "Salut!" and was so delighted with himself that he immediately wrapped his arms around me in a great big prideful hug. I was proud of him too. As for Mme. Blanc: Well, let's just say that she expressed unsmiling surprise. To the best of my knowledge, Maddox hasn't said "Salut" to her since. Or "Bonjour" either, of course.

But, you know, seemingly simple greetings aren't always as simple as they seem. Personally, I struggle with "Ça va." It's a phrase that literally means "That goes"; but of course it doesn't really mean that. In a cordial context it's both a question and an answer too, corresponding variously to English phrases such as "How're you doing?" and "Fine" and "Can't complain." It should be simple (it's just a mindlessly casual greeting, after all) but sometimes people attach other words to it too (like oui and bien) which makes it all more complicated, and I've never been able to quite figure out how exactly the script should go. Consequently, when people say "Ça va?" to me, my wheels fly off and I usually end up dumbly mumbling a semi-incoherent stream of random French pleasantries and then, just to keep my bases covered, I lean in close for a kiss on each cheek. It's working so far. (Well, with the women it is.) Still, I'm acutely aware of the fact that my high-school French classes never prepared me for the ordinary pleasantries of life in France. Instead, we all learned stiffly formal phrases like "Comment allez-vous?" – which, it turns out, on one actually ever says out loud.

Speaking of stiffly formal phrases that no one actually ever says out loud: "Je m'appelle Mark." Now I don't know about you, but that was one of the first things I learned in French class. I was taught that it was practically on par with "Bonjour" as a common, polite, and useful thing to say. In fact, I always considered "Je m'appelle [your name here]" to be part of the unofficial Holy Trinity of emblematic French phrases, right there with "Où est la bibliothèque?" and "Le fromage est sur la table." Well, apparently I was wrong. In real life, just as no one ever inquires as to the whereabouts of the library, or declares the whereabouts of cheese, no one ever says "Je m'appelle [your name here]." Well, no one but me that is. And after many months here, I finally realized this. I think that, unlike every other phrase in French, this one perhaps translates in a rather literal way: "I call myself Mark." Which makes it not only severely formal and old-fashioned, but also a plainly preposterous thing to say. It's as though I've been going about France shaking people's hands and saying "I wish I could keep a hammer in my ear." Or, perhaps, it's as though when I first meet people, I stare coldly into their eyes, point both of my thumbs rigidly toward my puffed-out chest and, like some tribal overlord declaiming his intentions to conquer the world, announce myself to the trembling masses: "I call myself Mark."

So, even though I still haven't exactly learned the right way to greet people, at least I've learned that everything that I always thought was right is actually wrong – and makes me come across like some sort of arrogant asshole from the 17th Century. And I've learned why whenever I bend down to chat with children, they just look at me like I'm from Mars.

Anyway, back to Maddox: A couple of weeks ago he did a series of three drawings. I asked him what he was drawing, and he told me. These are his exact words:
Drawing #1: "No stars, no sun, no moon, and no tape"
Drawing #2: "The world's largest paintbrush"
Drawing #3: "Two birds, the sky, air, and a vacuum cleaner"

These are a few of my favourite things

Wow. Time has really been flying by here in the south of France. I feel a little like I am already in mourning for Provence. I find myself noticing (and talking about, almost obsessively) all the little things about life here that I am really going to miss. Things like:

- The mournful yet peaceful sound of the bells chiming the hour and the half hour, all day long … and vespers and Sunday services, and many other things I can’t seem to fathom. What is it, for example, about Saturday morning at 8am that calls for a kajillion (sp?) bells to be rung? Whoopsie, this was supposed to be a list of the things I love. And I do love the bells. Really, I do. But this morning I was managing to sleep in until the almost unprecedented time of 8am. We were out late last night, so for once Maddox was sleeping in, allowing me to sleep in. And I was loving it. But really, I suppose of all the ways to be woken up at 8am on a Saturday morning, provençal village bells are a pretty good way to go.

Okay, back to the list.

- Eating almost all of our meals outside in the shade of our lovely garden.

- Having a post-school swim in the pool with the kids.

- The sounds of Maddox playing soccer with neighbouring kids on the 6 foot-wide “street” we live on.

- Taking a 10 minute walk in almost any direction from town and finding myself in a remote, quiet spot.

- The extraordinarily loud frog-song after the sun goes down.

- The bird song, all day and all night. I kid you not. The first few times I heard birdsong in the middle of the night I was very confused thinking it was dawn. Nope. Just French birds who seem to like to party all damn night.

- Walking the kids to school, and having that only take 2 minutes.

- Having almost every stranger you encounter saying a friendly, “Bonjour!” or the like.

- I suppose it is almost redundant to mention the weekly Cotignac market. I have already mentioned before how this is my favorite day of the week, and an activity I hate miss.

- Going out to dinner with the kids on the main cours. Mark and I get to sit under the gorgeous plane trees and drink our pichet de rosé, while the kids run around mostly unattended, running into their friends, climbing on the fountains, or finding other entertainments.

- The quiet.

- The quality of the light and the reds, golds and yellows of the buildings.

- The cheeses, the incredible produce, the bread, the pastries, the... OK, wait a minute. I can tell sitting here, that I actually have a lot to say about food. I am going to have to dedicate a blog soon to the food culture here. You’ll just have to wait for bated breath for the one.

Bonjour chaton

It's hot. I've taken to wearing my sarong around the house. Although not in public. Not yet anyway.

It's hot, and so we've been in the water a lot. This past weekend we drove up to Lac de Sainte Croix, rented a pedal-boat, and pedal-paddled our way up into the Gorge du Verdon. Spectacular. It's like being in some deep canyon in the American southwest, except that the cliffs are a surreal golden yellow and the water is a surreal milky blue and instead of being surrounded by a bunch of hooting and hollering Arizonans drinking cheap beer and throwing the empty cans in the water, you're surrounded by a bunch of hooting and hollering French folks drinking real Champagne and popping the corks in the water.

We've also been swimming a lot. Jasper swims like a trout. Maddox still uses artificial floatation. Quincy went with him to buy some water-wings a couple of weeks ago and Maddox chose the bright pink Hello Kitty ones. No surprise there. Whereas most of the world might think that Hello Kitty apparel is designed to appeal to 6-year old Japanese schoolgirls, Maddox is under the impression that it's the epitome of classy European menswear. I suppose I must take the blame for that. Because, well, because of my wristwatch.

I don't usually wear a watch back home in Vancouver where I'm surrounded by clocks. But here in rural France, I figured a wristwatch would come in handy. I didn't want to spend much money on it, though. So, a couple of months ago, when Quincy drove to Brignoles to do some shopping, I asked her to buy me the cheapest wristwatch she could find. Turns out the cheapest wristwatch she could find was made by Hello Kitty.

It's pink and sky-blue. Its skinny little plastic band barely fits around my skinny little wrist. Its petite little digital watch-face is embedded in a petite little plastic flower. It keeps time flawlessly. I wear it every day.

And now that it's hot outside, it's no longer lurking behind long sleeves. People are taking notice.

For instance: I was at the bakery a few days ago, buying bread, and as I was offering up my handful of coins, the bakery-woman smirked and nodded toward my wrist and said, "C'est une très jolie montre." Yes, I agreed; it is.

And it's not just grown-ups that are impressed. We attended a picnic recently, on a hippie farm of some sort near Lac de Sainte Croix, where they have chickens and swine and yurts and fanciful treehouses. It was a pot-luck affair ("auberge Espagnole," as they say in France – because, apparently, pot-luck is for Spaniards), organized by a bunch of organic food enthusiasts, and so we ate lots of rustic breads and quiches and patés made from the flesh of local pigs and cheeses squeezed from the teats of local goats. After lunch a bunch of us, accompanied by our kids, went for a walk. As we were walking, one little girl suddenly started yammering at me in very excited and slightly disconcerted French. I didn't know what she was talking about. She pointed to my wrist, and then I began to understand. Hello Kitty. Yes, I agreed (in French), it isn't often you see a Hello Kitty watch on a man. And, yes, it might seem reasonable to assume that the watch belongs to my daughter. But it's not Jasper's, I said; it's mine. What do you think of it, I asked her proudly. And she said, "Elle est très belle." Yes, I agreed (in French); she is indeed.

So, you know, maybe I should just go ahead and wear my sarong proudly everywhere I go. It's not like I have some sort of manly reputation to keep up.

In which Mark starts to think seriously about what his French stripper name might should be

It has been pointed out that maybe, for my own protection, I should be blogging under an alias.

Lots of the bloggers use wacky handles. Plus, there is a long and honorable tradition of using a pen name when contributing to a genre outside of your usual domain. If the pseudonym approach to off-brand work has been good enough for Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie and Dustin Hoffman, then, hey, maybe I oughta give it a whirl as well.

And then there's the whole self-protection thing. "Our French Files" doesn't always present me in the most flattering light. While I'd like to think that this blog portrays me as an intrepid international adventurer, it's more likely that I come across as some sort of clueless doofus with a footnote fetish. Do I really want all that embarrassing small-headed spastic woodpecker stuff attached to the name "Mark Schaller"? Shouldn't I be protecting my brand a bit better than that?

So, yeah, I'm thinking about an alias, some sort of handle that would be appropriate for a blog about a sabbatical in southern France. But how might I arrive at my French blogger name?

Is there some sort of formula to follow for a nom de blog (or nom de blague)? You know, like how there are these half-serious recipes for figuring out other hypothetical pseudonyms – your stripper name, your drag queen name, your professional wrestler name, that sort of thing – which always involve combining the name of your first pet with your favorite crayon color or your fourth-favorite 19th-century German philosopher, or something like that. The outcomes aren't always realistic. (I mean, I can't even imagine a professional wrestler named "The Raspberry Snowflake," And no self-respecting stripper would call himself "Cerulean Schopenhauer." Come on.) But still, it's something.

So anyway, Quincy and I got to talking about this yesterday, and decided to come up with an recipe that I might follow in order to cook up a nom de blague.

"How about using the street that we live on for part of your name," suggested Quincy. "That sort of thing always shows up in these sorts of things." Good idea. Here in Cotignac, we live on Rue de la Cadelle. It's not exactly a street (it's more of an invisible alley that narrows further into a foot path, but which people sometimes drive their cars on anyway because, you know, this is France). But it's good enough for half of a made-up name: Cadelle. But what about the rest of my blogging faux-nom?

Here again Quincy offered some cunning guidance: "What's something else that's emblematic of your time here in France?" she asked, leadingly. Hmmm, let's see. Intrepid international adventuring? She laughed. Pitch-perfect conversations in my flawless French? She laughed again. Nose-to-the-grindstone 16-hour days completing solemn scientific articles, one after another? She laughed long and loud, and then turned serious. "Bakeries," she said, "Boulangeries. Patisseries. You've spent weeks and weeks sampling all kinds of breads and tarts and puff pastries. What's your favorite? Because whatever it is, that oughta be part of your French blogger name."

Excellent idea. But there is so much to choose from, and it's almost impossible to identify the one bakery item here that is my absolute name-worthy favorite. There's that olive bread that they make at the bakery that's closest to Maddox's school, but which they only make on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I do love that. (Although I'm not sure pain d'olives works wonderfully well as a personal name.) Oh, and there are those croissants aux pinons that we buy there too, stuffed with an amazing almond paste and coated with pine nuts. Yum. And then there are the sacristains – especially the ones that we buy from the bakery down by the fire station – and which Jasper in particular has repeatedly identified as the thing that she will miss most of all when we return to Vancouver. A sacristain is truly awesome. (Although I might feel a bit uncomfortable appropriating that word – which refers also to a Church caretaker – for such an unholy purpose as a prankish nom de blague.) Ah, and then there are the slices of custard pie – des flans. I'm particularly partial to a singularly fantastic coconut flan that they sometimes sell in the narrow little bakery near la mairie. Mouth-wateringly wonderful. Yes, yes, the coconut flan. (Which, happily, no one actually ever calls flan au noix de coco, because that would be just way too much of a mouthful to include in a made-up name). Mmmm... coco flan. Or, as Dustin Hoffman's pseudonym's character's student's father might say: "Mmmm... coco flan."

So: Coco Flan Cadelle. If I can figure out how to change my username on this website, that just might become my alias – my French blogger name. (Although, now that I think about it, it might actually work better as my French stripper name instead.)

The dictionary game

You know the dictionary game, right – where you choose some weird word out of the dictionary that nobody knows and everyone has to make up a definition that sounds like it might be the real definition, and the best bluffer wins. It's fun. There was a time when I played a lot of dictionary, and I loved all those ridiculous but semi-authentic-sounding definitions that emerged – like "a honey-colored ceremonial bathcap" or "any statue of a chicken." I still treasure the memory of that evening in the early spring of 1987 when (in response to the word nobble) my friend Snacker ventured the following: "To eat corn on the cob in a violent and bucktoothed manner." It's an absurd definition, of course, but because it made such visually astute reference to a treasured comic strip panel (depicting, if I recall correctly, Dennis the Menace's dad), it was very much a winner.

It's with this in mind that I thought it might be fun to use the dictionary game as a means of conveying to you one specific aspect of our life in France that, for obvious reasons, I won't exactly miss very much, but in a weird sort of way I will miss just a tiny bit.

Okay, so here's the gimmick. I'm gonna give you a phrase in French, and then I'll list some options as to what it translates to. And you gotta guess the right answer. Okay, ready? Here we go.

Here's the phrase in French: s'apporte à bonne chance.

And here are your options as to what it means:

1. A polite way of referring to a tall, thin, small-headed man from another country.

2. To insist on wearing preposterous-looking sports sandals every day, regardless of the weather.

3. To amble down the street in an eager, distracted manner.

4. The quaint custom, common throughout much of Europe, in which people blithely let their dogs crap all over the streets and sidewalks, and very deliberately choose to NOT pick it up.

5. To glance down at one's feet finally, a split second too late.

And the answer is....

None of above. Or, wait, maybe it's all of the above. In any case, it was a trick question. Translated directly, that French phrase is about bringing oneself good luck. And, apparently, people in France might say something like that to you when you step in dogshit, which you inevitably will. Kind of like how someone in Germany might say "Gesundheit" after you sneeze. Except that this isn't about sneezing, obviously; it's about stepping in dogshit, which really isn't the same thing at all.