My wife runs this account. She films me, narrates me, and recently published, without my consent, a list of American things I supposedly love. Fine. Here is my response, in writing, where I control every word. Seven things. I have been here years. I have tried. I do not understand.
1. Iced coffee in January
It is negative ten degrees. The harbor is frozen. And there, in the drive-through line, an entire town orders large iced coffees with gloves on. I asked my wife to explain. She said, "it's an iced coffee day." Every day, apparently, is an iced coffee day. This is not a beverage. This is a regional condition.
2. The leaf blower
In France, we have leaves also. We rake them, or we make peace with them, as one makes peace with autumn. Here, a man will spend two hours and one hundred decibels moving leaves from his grass to the street, from which the wind returns them, and he will do this again Saturday, forever. It is not gardening. It is a duel with nature that nature has already won.
3. Cheese in aerosol form
I will say this once, calmly. Cheese is a living thing. It comes from a place, it has a season, it must wake up before dinner. It does not come from a nozzle. When I first saw the can, I thought it was for repairing the car. In some sense, I still do.
4. Dinner at 5:30
At 5:30 in the afternoon, I am having a thought about dinner, the way one has a thought about the horizon. It is out there. We are moving toward it. To eat dinner at 5:30 is to arrive at the airport four hours early and then also take an earlier flight. My complete position is on the record; the treaty in our house is seven o'clock, and I honor treaties.
5. The snacks at children's sports
My son's soccer matches last one hour. The children run, approximately, eleven minutes of this. And yet there is a snack schedule, a snack parent, a cooler, juice pouches, and a post-game distribution that resembles a humanitarian operation. In France, a child who exercises for eleven minutes receives, at four o'clock, the same goûter as always. The sport is not a famine. I have said this at the field. I am no longer the snack parent.
6. The twenty-minute lunch
Americans describe lunch the way one describes a traffic delay - something endured, at a desk, while working. In France the desk is where lunch is NOT. I have seen my wife eat a salad over a keyboard with real skill and real sadness. The keyboard deserves better. So does she.
7. Air conditioning set to punish
Outside: a beautiful summer day. Inside every American building: February. I carry a sweater in August like a man who has learned something. Because I have.
A concession, because my wife will add one anyway
The list of what this country has won from me exists, and it is longer than I authorized. America is generous, optimistic, and enormous in all directions, and it gave me my wife, my sons, and, against every instinct I brought across the Atlantic, a Costco membership. I understand more than I admit. But not the leaf blower. Never the leaf blower.
Questions, answered
What do French people find most confusing about America?
Consistently: iced drinks year-round, eating schedules (early dinner, desk lunches, constant snacks), extreme air conditioning, and processed-cheese formats. The confusion is usually about structure and timing more than the food itself.
Do French people really carry sweaters in summer in America?
Many do - American indoor air conditioning runs far colder than European norms, and the outdoor-indoor temperature gap genuinely startles visitors from France.
Is this column really written by the French husband?
Yes - this one is his, in his own words, published with his consent for once. His wife's editorial contribution was limited to agreeing with item four.
For his verdicts delivered with unreasonable seriousness, we're on Instagram — and Le Bulletin gets one field note like this a month.