Why the World Hates the French

When you're in the United States, you are in your own little bubble. We don't really think that much about what's beyond our own borders. Occasionally you stop to think that there is something beyond your massive continent besides Canada, farmland and Hollywood. The realization begins to come (at least for me) toward the end of high school when you're sitting in health class and the subject of obesity comes up and the teacher makes you watch Supersize Me. During that class, we saw clips of people who were in various European countries claiming that McDonald's was created in their nation for their people. We all had heard that McDonald's was a global phenomenon, but no one really believed it until then.


This introduced to me the concept of global animosity. Like many sports teams (Red Sox and Yankees) and politicians (Hillary vs. the world), there are rivalries that exist between nations. Some do it purely to assert their superiority complexes and make those in power feel better about themselves, while others just want to make large nuclear bombs and nuke the crap out of other countries. As far as we know, that means Palestine and Israel are rivals, as are North Korea and South Korea, but only according to media reports. The last 2 sets of countries are all about the kaboom, but the other ones who simply want to slander each other for the heck of it. Maybe it dates back to Ye Olde Prehistoric times, I don't know. Either way, these competitions exist.

And as time went on, I noticed that most countries didn't like the French. Freedom fries were served instead of French fries and the castle guards in Spamalot have ridiculously snobby accents, as if we could barely tolerate their existence. France was the Richie Rich who wasn't willing to share his theme park with anyone, in short, but this always mystified me. I hope someone is following the thought process here.

Fast forward to the second semester of my sophomore year of college, where I am studying abroad in London. My internship at ESPN is going very well and I'm meeting all sorts of people who work to represent different countries like Belgium, Norway and Italy. In addition, most of my co-workers are from other countries. My supervisor, Nick, is from Italy, as is Danieli, while Klara is from Germany. There is also another woman who sits diagonally across from me, whose name is Cecile. She's a nice woman in her late twenties who works in the marketing department for ESPN Classic. The first time we met was in the Café Disney (aka the cafeteria) at lunch, where we introduced ourselves. Cecile is a really nice name and usually only takes 2 tries, depending on how thick the accent is of the Cecile you're talking to. This one happened to be born in some place in the Caribbean where French is the major language, which means, her French-Caribbean accent made her as easy to understand as a spectacular pun that I am currently lacking.

So yesterday, I was sitting at my workstation, writing like mad to finish the quarterly newsletter that I had been assigned, when Cecile asked me something about the box of chocolates on my desk. The question was, "So...who is she?" Turns out the chocolates were from my mom, which made it a little awkward since she was obviously interested in finding out what kind of hot girl I'm dating. But she then asks me what my name is, since she had forgotten what I had said a week or so ago. I simply told her Seth. "Zeth," she replied, "Is that it?"

"No, it's Seth."

".......Zeth."

"No, Seth. Sssssseth." There was a long pause, a dramatic one even.

"Zeth?"

Her voice was garbled and throaty, as if she was trying to constantly advertise for a Listerine commerical. The 's' was just not going to work. In the end, she asked me my middle name (Thomas) and has decided to call me Tom or Thomas instead. It was either that, endure 3 more months of Zethiness or be referred to as Mr. Palmer. But she will not be calling me Tommy. That name has been ruined thanks to some jerk who dated one of my friends back in high school.

So if you're wondering why the world hates the French, just find one and ask them to pronounce your name. Chances are they won't be able to be able to do it and will call you by some other name.