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.