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.

Half an elephant and not-so-smart mice

The kids brought home handbills; posters were pasted on walls; and on Saturday, a small car with a large loudspeaker on its roof made a tour of the village, fuzzily blaring the news: a parc de loisirs was coming to town. Quincy and I studied a flyer carefully. Among the various spectacles and amusements, we figured the kids would be especially excited about the objets gonflables – a phrase that we assumed, correctly, to be a French way of talking about "bouncy castles." As for me, I was intrigued by the promise of Sourisland – a "village miniature de souris savants!" Because, you know, if there's one thing more entertainingly surreal than a miniature village, it's a miniature village populated by preternaturally smart mice.

The parc de loisirs was set up in a dusty parking lot next to the gasoline station. There was a small circus tent and four large inflatables, each as big as a house. Despite all the pre-parc publicity, there weren't a lot of people there. Which is not surprising, given that Cotignac is a sleepy little town. Also, a lot of families probably preferred to spend their sunny Sunday afternoon on amusements that didn't cost 8 euros per child (but only 5 euros for grown-ups!). Quincy and I got our money's worth by relaxing in the weeds at the edge of the lot, leaning against a makeshift fence, and watching the action on the inflatables. Which was mostly stuff like this: Jasper slides to the bottom of a giant inflatable sinking ship. Maddox too. Jasper takes off running, in shoeless stocking feet, across the dusty gravel in the direction of a giant inflatable chicken. Maddox, also in his socks, stumbles across the gravel after her.

The gonflables scene went on until a loudspeaker called everyone into the tent, where a series of entertainments began to unfold. As they unfolded, it became abundantly clear that the whole thing was very much a mom-and-pop-and-their-collection-of-kids operation (the dad and the kids provided the entertainment, while mom sold popcorn and cotton candy from a cart outside) which made me enjoy it all the more.

It started with the trained goat. It appears that this is de rigeur among carnies in the south of France: A scrawny goat with gigantic distended teats balancing upon an increasingly tall stack of increasingly tiny stools. Then there was the teenage daughter of the troupe, dressed for burlesque, walking on a wire and twirling a dozen hula-hoops. At one point, Jasper leaned back and whispered, "She would be more beautiful if she didn't have braces." I reflected on my own metal-mouthed high-school years of braces and retainers and headgear. "Hey kid, don't be so judgmental," I wanted to warn Jasper, "That's you in about 5 years, minus (I hope) the sequined bikini."

After she was done, the patriarch (and head clown) invited the audience into the ring so that we could try our own amateurish luck at hula-hooping. We were all comically bad at it. And some of us were comically badder than others. I'm told that I attracted an especially loud set of laughs when, after failing to spin the hoop around my waist, I tried to spin it around my neck by jerkily jackhammering my head back and forth like some sort of spastic woodpecker.

There was one little boy, though, maybe about Maddox's age, who was amazingly adept, and kept his hoop spinning perfectly with a confident rapid rhythm that reminded me of a masturbating monkey I once saw at a zoo. After we all gave him a big round of applause, it was revealed that he was a ringer: He was the youngest of the circus siblings, and this was his dad's amusing way of introducing him. A few minutes later, though, the boy wasn't feeling so great. While his two older brothers – dressed like identical homeless mimes – showed off some elaborate balancing skills on piles of barrels and planks, the 4-year-old nearly collapsed in tears while trying unsuccessfully to set up his own apparatus on the uneven ground. This led to some vivid acting-out in the direction of his dad who was trying simultaneously to energetically emcee the show and to keep the whole thing from becoming a train-wreck of predictable family dynamics, and who was doing it all while wearing a ludicrous orange shag-carpet wig.

Things soon got back on track with another crowd-pleasing piece of audience participation, in which Jasper played a prominent role. This particular act involved a dancing elephant. Except that it wasn't a real dancing elephant. It was two people bending over with an elephant-shaped sheet fitted over them, blindly following a bewigged clown's Svengali-like instructions to kneel down and to stand up, to trot and to boogie and, inevitably, to fall over sideways in a hysterical heap. Jasper was half of that elephant. Specifically: the back half.

I found it all entirely cheesy and delightful and worth every centime, but I did wonder if we were ever going to see that miniature village of super-smart mice. After all that audience participation, I was starting to half-seriously think that there weren't any precocious rodents after all, that "souris savants" wasn't to be taken literally, that maybe it was just some ironic euphemism meaning, loosely, "easily-gulled country folk who pay good money to become spastic woodpeckers and elephants' asses in front of their friends and neighbors."

But I was wrong. Sourisland did indeed exist, and it was finally unveiled after a second sweaty round of bouncy castle fun. Yep, it was a miniature village all right, with a school and a church and post office and all. But the mice inside it didn't seem so savants. Aside from climbing a tiny ladder and sliding down a tiny slide, they didn't show off any special skills. They mostly just stuck their heads in and out of the tiny windows of the tiny buildings, and pooped their tiny turds all over the tiny streets. Big deal; I could do that myself.