Bastille Day Memory

On this day, Bastille Day, the commemoration of the beginning of the French Revolution, 17 years ago, I was in France. I was in Dijon for a month, supposedly learning better French in a summer program at the University of Burgundy.

I was, in general, a very good kid in that summer program. I did not, like most of the other students, take advantage of the lower French drinking age to get trashed and stay out late most nights.

But on Bastille Day, we all went to the lake for the fireworks. We had all missed the Fourth of July fireworks, of course, since we were in France that night. And shockingly, public transportation coming home from the lake was a little backed up.

So a bunch of us were standing around in the City Centre waiting for the bus that would take us back up to the university. A guy in our group laid down on the concrete with his blanket and a bottle, basically acting like a homeless guy. It was, perhaps, not particularly politically correct, but it was kinda funny, just because it was late and we were tired.

Then this French guy came up and lit a firecracker right by his head! I'm not kidding. He lit it and stuck it right by the guy's head as he was lying on the ground! I don't think the guy actually got hurt or I would remember that. I just remember being so completely shocked that someone would think that was funny. He could have gone deaf or had a eye put out or some other horrible thing.

And for a long time, I thought about this incident as an example of a cultural difference. It didn't seem to me like something an American person would do. As a general rule, I feel like Americans are more uptight about things like fire and personal hygiene and food hygiene and various other hygiene and safety rules. And that French people are more relaxed about such things. And mostly, I consider Americans uptight and French people relaxed. This, obviously, was an example of taking "relaxed" way too far.

But today, it occurred to me that an American could easily do such a dumb, dangerous thing. I'd just never see it happen. You might read about it in "News of the Weird". And quite probably, people would assume such a person was a "redneck". And then it struck me how weird it was that a French person and a redneck might have something in common.

I hope you weren't expecting this to have anything to do with Bastille Day. Maybe just: Isn't it grand that we have the freedom, here and in France, to do stupid, dangerous things? Hmmmm...