Good-bye, Neigh-bors (An Abrupt Alteration)

My personal life has gone through a significant change within the past week: I am no longer living in Sablé-sur-Sarthe.

I have said good-bye to this:

The Neigh-bors had a kid

And openly greeted the Plantagenêt Cité in Le Mans on Friday July 4th. The decision to move was coordinated on Wednesday July 2nd. Le Mans may only be 40 kilometers away from Sablé, but it is worlds apart.

The Saint Julien Cathedral is Le Mans' shining architectural glory

Le Mans, home of the 24 Hours of Le Mans

After two years of being surrounded by cornfields and horses, I had forgotten how noisy bustling cities can be. While I do find myself at times missing the peace and quiet of the countryside, the adjustment to having an efficient, reliable public transportation system with frequent buses and trams and to seeing people my own age makes the transition much smoother.

Plus, seeing this store whenever I walk home never fails to coax a smile across my lips.

Barb the French Bean

Lessons in French: How to Say "Mullet"

In my four years of living in Croissant-and-Baguetteland, I am happy to report that going throughout life isn't always a high fashion runway that requires you to look your absolute best. While French women certainly make a point to look slightly more chic and elegant to their male counterparts, one isn't obligated to look ready to go to a party. What is expected in French dressing sense is that you look presentable: never leave the house in pajamas, keep your bits covered with reasonably lengthy attire, don't look like you just rolled out of bed then went straight to the shower.

Being someone who is perpetually late*, I've been able to cut some corners and get away with wearing just a minimal amount of make-up (lipstick and moisturizer) and my otherwise unkempt hair is kept in a tight bun. I admit that cartoon me, who is always sporting flouncy, untamed locks, is not the best representation of my day-to-day existence.

Sorry if I mislead you guys. 

*Unless I have to catch a train. I'm almost never late for trains. And if I AM late, its nice to know that I can always count on the SNCF to have my back with their own tardiness.

Still, living far away from the familiar American shores and all of the subtle cultural nuances from back home, I never, NEVER thought that I would see the day when I saw a French person sporting the dreaded Mullet. For those who are not in the know, the Mullet is a particular hairstyle that is reputed for being a "business in the front, party in the back" cut, meaning that it provides an odd combination of commencing with what would seem a normal short hairstyle that is abruptly tapered by a long mane.

When you look at a Mullet, you get the uneasy sensation that something is aesthetically off. Heck, when pronounced with an American dialect, the word itself is phonetically unpleasant.

I'd like to imagine that it was probably created by someone who was inept at cutting their own hair and, rather than admitting to their friends it was an accident, decided to convince them all that it would be the latest trend to rock trailer park communities.

Yes, the humble Mullet, with its short, spiky fringe and cascading rear, insinuates a stigma that the wearer is an uneducated, low-income loser who is probably addicted to beer and trucker hats, and terrible movies like Joe Dirt certainly didn't help to improve that stereotype.

Those who are brave enough to sport the Mullet effectively have placed themselves to be a laughingstock in American eyes and are portrayed as being as American as apple pie, bald eagles and Old Glory.

So imagine my horror shock when on one fine Saturday morning I encountered a Frenchman sporting this American hairdo.

Then imagine my further urge to regurgitate my lunch shock when I saw that the Frenchman's wife also sported a Mullet.

Then, dear reader, place yourself in my shoes when I resisted the desire to urgently call child services to report parental abuse saw that their two kids also had Mullets of their own! An entire French family with Mullets!

The Mulet Family Portrait

I was struck dumb. Had American cultural invasion to surreptitiously integrate itself into other countries finally taken its toll? Was I going to start seeing more and more beer pong parties with red Solo cups being advertised on T.V.?

(Of course not; France doesn't need to advertise alcohol, duh.)

After the initial wave of confusion ebbed and flowed from my mind, I courted the idea that perhaps this little odd family was just a one-time fluke. But then I attended the town's carnival and to my surprise, I spotting some more children donning the hairstyle! What is going on, I thought. This isn't right... I tried to reason that this style couldn't possibly be on the rise in France. No Mullet-based craze had yet to hit the runways in Paris and even in my most dreary days in Dijon, I had yet to have spotted a local wearing said 'do. Maybe, just maybe, the Mullet was concentrated to the area I reside in the Sarthe département.

I decided to consult my theories with my hairstylist, but since she is French and I didn't know the French term for "Mullet" (nor if there even WAS a term for it), I resorted to describing the physical aspects of the style.

"Have you ever seen a very particular hairstyle in which the hair is cut short in the front and kept long in the back? Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Her serene features scrunched when she cringed and she nodded.

"What is that hairstyle called in French?"

"Le Macgyver."

I unintentionally paused for emphasis.

"Le Macgyver?"

That bomb should nuke Macgyver's Mullet out of existence. 

"Yes."

"As in...?"

"Macgyver."

"As in the T.V. character?"

No amount of string and paper clips will let you worm your way from my wrath, Macgyver.

"Yes, that one."

I went to explain to her that I was extremely surprised to see the French sporting this hairstyle and had never seen one until I had moved to Sablé-sur-Sarthe. I mentioned to her the social stigma that the Mullet evokes back home and how people who wear it are considered to be very "particulier." She drew a sharp intake of air and said that a similar stigma also exists in France.

"Years ago, when the show aired, from its popularity, it started a craze and people wanted the same style. You see it less and less these days in France, but there are people who still have a hard time letting things from the past go."

Goddammit, Macgyver. Who knew you'd have this effect on deluded French people?

I then asked my hairstylist another question.

"Have you ever had somebody ask you for le Macgyver?"

Her brown eyes widened with the recollection of one woman who, despite my hairstylist's suggestions and pleas to consider other options, insisted on having her hair cut into a Mullet.

"I didn't even know how to go about this hairstyle! You see, haircuts are supposed to fit into a 'frame,' and le Macgyver, with its irregular combination of two different frames, made it very difficult to reproduce."

She then leaned next to my ear and, with utter scandal dancing in her tone, whispered,"Things about it just don't go at all because you can't distinguish when one part ends and another begins. It looks so bad."

AH-HA! Eureka!, I thought. No wonder the Mullet looks aesthetically unbalanced; it's because the techniques to style it aren't even right in the first place!

To console myself, asked my hairstylist to give me a non-Mullet cut for the special occasion of celebrating my last full day in my mid-Twenties*.

Take that, Macgyver.

Barb the French Bean


*I turn Twenty-Seven on April 6th. As people back home in Miami would point out, "Estás vieja."

Home

For the past five years, I've become a bit of a nomad, alternating between moving to France, then back to the place where I grew up, then back to France. As each day passes in my life in France, I am reminded of how much of a foreigner I truly am, language mishaps and differences aside.

However, with time, I've begun to slowly acclimate myself to the spoken and unspoken social cues the French have: always greeting store clerks and cashiers with a "Bonjour," acquiescing an agreement with a wispy, gasp-like "ouais" or a small "mhn" accompanied by a quick nod, always stopping to have the mid-morning "pause café," always respecting mealtimes and eating meals in small courses, hardly ever raising one's voice mid-conversation. The small things that used to trip me up and target me with some invisible bulls-eye have since become ingrained into my very being. I don't feel so out of place anymore.

Every once in a while, though, I find myself longing for a slightly more comfortable and familiar existence, one which makes a little more sense to me. I find myself missing "home."

Then arises the complex question that all expats face with discomfort: what is home, exactly? For those who have never traveled or lived elsewhere, that question is answered rather easily. It is not the case for someone like me.

(Should a French person or foreigner inquire about my origins, I answer that I come from Miami. It's a quicker response and leads to the inevitable awestruck observation of wonderment in which the person in question cannot understand why I ever left Miami.)

Is "home" the anchor of one's childhood and adolescence? It is the current mailing address where telephone bills and bank statements arrive? Is "home" the place where all of my stuff is located? Is "home" tangible, or is it a state of mind?

Thinking to my own mother, a Colombian who grew up in Cartagena, Colombia, "home" for her was Cartagena. Except she left "home" at the age of sixteen only to move to Venezuela, Puerto Rico and then the United States. Throughout her adult life, she had not gone "home" for over thirty-two years, and by the time she did, the Cartagena of her youth was replaced by a more modern Cartagena that felt at once familiar and foreign to her. Things were the same and at once...unspeakably different.

I decided that I needed to pay a visit to Miami to see for myself.

I got the window seat. As the 10-hour flight neared the end, gliding over the sparkling turquoise and teal waters of the Bahamian islands, the pilot announced that we would arrive in Miami International Airport in approximately twenty minutes. It was then that after a seven-month hiatus I caught my first aerial glimpse of the land where I was raised. Flat lands intermingled by a series of dark, murky canals and of complex gray highways snaking in every direction, its streams of rapid transit zooming in quick fashion, various tidy sections of housing developments and coral gabled houses with pristine swimming pools in the backyard and, way in the distance, the unconquered swamps and marshes of the Everglades. This was South Florida. This was my old home.

So what is "home" to me? Home is familiar. Home is where I can relax and breathe a little more easily. That can be in the comfort of my bedroom in Miami or in Sablé-sur-Sarthe.

Home can be the place where people still refer to me as "La Niña" (the girl) rather than Madame. Home can be the place where people refer to me as Madame rather than "La Niña." 

Home is where I can have palitroques, pastelitos de queso and croquetas de jamón for breakfast. 

Palitroque: crunchy Cuban breadsticks
Pastelitos: Cuban pastries
Croquetas: Croquettes

(This is also as close as I am going to get to 'Instagramming' my food. Enjoy)

It can be the place where I have a café au lait with tartines or un croissant au beurre if I so choose. 

Home, for me, is both France and the United States. 

However, as my current physical location is in South Florida, I will elaborate on what "home" is like in the United States. 

Home is multi-colored Surinam cherries dangling off branches like early Christmas ornaments.

Home is bright, cloudless skies during "dry" season*.

*Should you choose to visit Florida during "wet" season (mid-April to mid-November), I highly advise that you bring an umbrella and a hair straightener.

Home is the large bougainvillea with magenta petals in the backyard. 

Home is where I find spiders relaxing among their gossamer threads.

Home is the canal where I would spend many an afternoon in my youth throwing pebbles to observe the expanding ripple effect on the water, gingerly tiptoeing on its edge and risking falling in just to peer at its length in the distance, and waiting, waiting ever so patiently for that one second to spot a fish breaking the tranquil surface to emancipate itself towards the sky.

Home is seeing a mother Muskovy duck leading her cheeping brood of fluffy ducklings and they make me remember fondly the Muskovy duckling that my family raised when I was ten years old.

But then, I start to notice things that are indeed different about home:

The mango tree's growth is considerably stunted, much smaller than I had anticipated. (Mom had had its branches trimmed to strengthen its growth).

The remnants of former trees are depicted by lone stumps.

The hole which was used as a shelter by brooding Muskovy ducks as their nesting ground has since been covered in dirt.

I find the people loud, boisterous. They cut each others' sentences to state their point. The driving is erratic. Repetitive chain stores dot the landscape.

Then, I realized amid my nostalgia that I was no longer even "home": the mundane details which escaped my daily existence and which I would have otherwise not even appreciated have been captured in photographs, as if I were another tourist visiting Florida.

Then, as further proof that things are indeed different, I took a good look at myself. How was I dressed? I had opted to go outside sporting not flip-flops (or, as I was accustomed to occasionally, barefoot) but rain boots because I couldn't bear the thought of having my feet being tickled by the blades of grass and its cold, morning dew.

Living in the muddy French countryside has instilled an aversion to having wet feet. 

My obtained paleness provided further evidence that something was off about myself in correlation to my surroundings. Even indoor-dwelling Floridians who make it a habit to remain living comfortably in the air conditioning have a darker complexion.

Bumbling about my first home, where I vaguely remember the locations of various items in the kitchen, makes me start to miss my second home (and the knowledge of having enough rosemary and black pepper).

But I know the drill now: by the time I do make it back to my second home and settle into my daily routines, I will start to miss the first one with nostalgic familiarity. As an expat, I am in a perpetual home limbo, which I have since resigned to accept.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Barb the French Bean

Reflections on My Second Year of Teaching in France: Life Really Floors You Sometimes

Warning: This post is quite long and not particularly funny. There are, however, a few cartoons to break up the monotony of pure text, so it's kinda like reading a children's book. Wheeeee! Cartoons!

Being a fairly new teacher who dove head-first into the French pedagogic world in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, it is not uncommon for me to have my thoughts be plagued by the notion that I am the absolute worst person in my profession.

Nearly daily, I convince myself that I am incompetent, that I am incapable of planning a structured lesson and, most importantly, motivating the kids to appreciate the subjects for which I am entrusted to pass on knowledge. As the minutes drag, I see the boredom in my students' eyes, their disinterest an apparent mask of disdain relaying what they think about me and my material. They judge. Even worse, they mock my accent, not realizing how deflating it is to have people not recognize the difficulty of how it is to communicate in another language. Some days are so horrid that I question why the hell I even care to do this job in the first place when I would rather much spend my days accomplishing my personal goal of becoming a published author.

(Ironically, even that goal is shot, for, lo, I am certain to be the worst writer in the world and cripple my determination by never finishing what I have started.)

Yet there are good days, or moments: a lesson went smoothly, the students grasped the material easily, they received good marks on an exam. Occasionally, when the bell rings, I'll even have a student break from his concentration, look up from his desk in shock, gasp, then utter that one spontaneous question any teacher loves to hear, "Already?"

I can't help but savor that delicious moment. I'll lock eyes with the student, smile and affirm "Yes, already. See you next time."

That doesn't happen often and I wish it did. Still, I suppose that one can't be spoiled.

The job also comes with the paralyzing jolt of the existential crisis. On the bad days, I wonder just how my teaching legacy will be, if at all, remembered. Will it be positive? Negative? Will nobody even care?

Will I even care, or shall I simply resolve to become a bitter, complacent, apathetic individual?


This week, I had a glimpse of what could be. My answer came in the guise of a large packet.

Before I explain the contents of said packet, I will first recount the story of some former students of mine from last year.

Two sisters, both in different years, left the school where I teach to study elsewhere. The first one, a former 3ème (around 15 years old) graduated from collège (middle school) to pursue a vocational training to become a beautician. The other sister, a bright and passionate animal-loving 16-year old 2nde (high school) is currently studying dog breeding and grooming. I taught the former English, the latter, Spanish.

Ever since they left the school, I have on occasion have had the good fortune to have our paths cross, usually when I go grocery shopping. I'm always glad to see them for they are kind people. Their mother is always with them. It is evident from our happenstance meetings that she is the person who passed on the garrulous but kindhearted traits to her own daughters. Our encounters are always memorable.

Prior to my going home for the summer holidays last year, my students begged me to send them a postcard from Miami. The United States is an impossible thing for them, a place that is so very out of reach. For my former English student, her dream is to one day be a make-up artist for female professional wrestlers. I raised my eyebrows at that dream because, prior to her uttering it, I had heard none quite like it before.

"But it'll never happen," she sighed.

"Don't say that," I retorted. "I never thought that I would get the chance to live in France, and look where I am, standing here, talking to you. If you work hard at what you want, then perhaps you'll surprise yourself in the future."

"But Madame, you will send us a postcard, won't you?" implored my Spanish student.

"Since you asked, my dear, of course I shall. I promise to do so. Please write down your address for me."

I went home. While my mother and I took our yearly outing to my favorite spot in Miami-Dade county, Bill Baggs Cape Florida, I struck gold at the gift shop and found a postcard to send to my students. I wrote them a message, placed a stamp in the corner and mailed it. I also sent them one from Savannah, Georgia. I soon followed the postcards back to France in preparation for the days when my life would be marked by punctual, hourly bells.

When the family and I had our next random encounter at the supermarket, the girls thanked me over and over about the cards. "They're so pretty! It makes me want to go see America!"

"We've placed them in frames," their mother informed me.

"Really?"

"Yes. They make wonderful decorations and brighten our walls."

Then, in an interesting turn of events, my Spanish student inquired if I had received their card in turn, the one that had been mailed to Miami. I informed them that I hadn't and that it probably arrived just after I had left. The girls looked slightly disappointed. But then:

"No matter! I'll send you a postcard from where I'm studying in Brittany!"

"Brittany? Ooh, I'd like that. I've never gotten a postcard from Brittany before, nor have I been there, which is silly when you consider how close the Loire Valley is to Brittany."

Seriously, it's, like RIGHT THERE.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, I received my postcard from La Bretagne. It made me want to go visit there. Instead, I went to Ireland and sent my students postcards from Dublin, Kylemore Abbey, Galway and Giant's Causeway.

They later exchanged a thank you letter as a sign of their gratitude.

In December, I had a bit of a predicament. I needed empty cartons for a project that I wanted to realize with my collège students. It proved to be a bit of a hassle because wherever I went to find boxes, I was told by store employees that none were available. Moreover, if I had managed to find boxes, I would have had no means of being able to transport them because I don't own a car.

But I've got playing Box Tetris down to an art.

By great coincidence, just when I thought that I would not be able to carry out my project, I heard a voice call out my name.

My last name, preceded by a "Madame." From this formality, I knew instantly that a student of mine had seen me. And as luck would have, it was my English student with her mother. They asked what I was doing. I explained.

They knew exactly where I needed to go to find boxes and they offered to drive me to the place.

"Are you sure? I mean, it wouldn't be any trouble for you to--"

"Oh, of course not! If anything, we'd be more than happy to help you!" And help me they did: in choosing the cartons, in carrying the cartons, even in unloading the cartons into my apartment. I apologized for the untidy state of my room.

"Don't worry about it, it's not a problem," they said generously.

"Oh, yes it is, because whenever my room is spic and span, no one comes to visit me. But the second it looks like a hurricane swept through, people come to visit and I give them the impression that I live in a constant mess!"

My student then noticed the flag hanging on my wall.

"Oh, it's the American flag! Is it a real one?" By "real one," she meant if it was a sturdy, genuine article made in the United States.

"Yes, it is. You can even see the stitching and each embroidered star."

"It's so cool and so pretty."

"I've always wanted a real American flag," her mother then said.

As luck would have it, I happened to have in my possession a spare American flag. An authentic one with careful stitching and embroidered stars. I had brought that flag from the United States as a request from someone who I would unfortunately never see again. It had since become a nomad in my room.

I reached into the bookcase where it had taken residence and presented it to the family.

"Here. I'm giving it to you."

"No, no, we can't accept it."

"Please do. I am very grateful for what you have done for me. I would want nothing more than for you to have it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" I insisted. "Didn't you say you wanted a real American flag? Have it!"


They thanked me for the gift. The mother mentioned that, if I agreed, she would speak with her former Spanish teacher to see if he could give me tips on the profession. I said that I wouldn't mind if she did.

The end of December approached. I flew off to the Netherlands to celebrate the New Year. The very first postcard that I sent on January 1st 2014 from Amsterdam was to my students. I came home to find a Christmas card sitting in my mailbox from them. I thanked them for their card and they thanked me for mine.


It seemed to me that my little game of postcard badminton had reached a draw. I already began to think about from where I would send them my next postcard. Possibly from Key West in March or maybe the Netherlands again in April.

Teaching resumed. Weeks passed. Lessons were taught. Students misbehaved. I lost my patience with them. Lessons were planned. Hours were slept with unease. Planned lessons failed. Students became bored. And I became dejected with each day. I questioned for the umpteenth time why, at the risk of losing my sanity, did I still do this job.


Then the packet came. The packet from my corresponding family.

I admit to being a bit perplexed from the size and weight. I felt inside the tawny envelope and determined that it contained something rectangular with several pages. My deduction was that a book was hidden inside! My heart leapt. I do so love books.

I carefully opened one side of the envelope and peaked at its contents.

There was no pristine book. Yet there were indeed pages.

In fact, there was something that resembled a book. One that had been in poor state with yellowed, stained pages. I removed the book-like item and glanced at the faded pastel green cover. The tattered cover was missing a corner and seemed to be on the cusp of losing yet another. On the other side, it had a black and white picture of two smiling Guatemalan boys dressed in haphazard fashion.

Since the picture had lost its glue foundation, I could read the French text on the back to determine that it had been taken from a newspaper. Even after so much time, the clipping clung onto the delicate cover. I opened the book-like item, realizing the cover had since become detached, and looked through the pages. Pools of a burnt ochre marked where the staples had been.

I recognized the French format for notebook paper. I glanced through the pages and was struck by a careful, somewhat familiar handwriting that had etched so many years ago lessons regarding poems, vocabulary and verb tenses. In Spanish.

I set the frayed notebook gingerly on the table and then turned my attention to the card that was also included in the envelope. Tucked inside it were a more recent newspaper clipping, another letter and the family's words. My former students said hello and expressed a hope that I am doing well and that they would see me again. They were so happy to have received my card.

The mother, on the other hand, explained what exactly was in my packet.

"Madame,

I have indeed received your beautiful card from the Netherlands, for which I thank you.

In exchange, I am giving you my Spanish notebook from my 2nde class. You will also find the letter that my former Spanish professor sent to me. Sorry!

I hope to see you again very soon."

"Sorry?" I thought. What was she apologizing about?

I read through her former professor's letter. In it, he eloquently joked about how kind it was for a student to remember an old "dinosaur" teacher. He mentioned that the frequent interactions of friendship he's had with former students was comforting and that one of his granddaughters also became a Spanish teacher in Paris. She loves this beautiful profession, which gives him great pleasure to know, yet she often realizes that it's sometimes difficult to do...sometimes with secret tears.

He remarked that times have indeed changed because his students gave him only nothing but happiness, every confusing generation. Yet those generations were educated by society, and especially by their parents. This is no longer the case.

Then, to my surprise, my name came up in his letter. He mentioned that while he doesn't doubt that I am a nice person, he cannot "honor" her request to contact me because it has come at a bad time. He is selling the house, he won't live in Sablé, this failing city. He also has family to look after.

I can't blame him for denying the request, for such is a life, I suppose. The older you become, the less time you'll have to dedicate it to anyone outside of family, and you'll wish to cherish every fleeting second granted to you in this ephemeral life.

Then, as a final shock, I read the newspaper clipping. It was dated from December 2010 and it featured a colored article interviewing the former Spanish teacher. He had just published his second novel and despite having had a life-long passion for writing, he had only published his first book at the age of seventy.

Seventy!

I sat there, a twenty-six year old, thinking that my life will never amount to anything, and was confronted by a hidden lesson that floored me. Here was history repeating itself. The mother exchanged letters with her teacher. I had unknowingly continued the tradition with her own daughters. And as a sign of appreciation, she bequeathed me a treasured notebook which, according to her, was a memento from her best year.

I wondered if I had been a part of her daughters' best year as well.

My limbs went numb and my mouth lost all sensation of being in a perpetual humid state. I wanted to cry.

Instead, I tucked the treasured gifts back into the packet, placed it in my pigeon hole, then, with secret tears, went to teach my 4ème students with a more emboldened outlook.


Barb the French Bean

The Tale of Stalker Cat

Shortly after setting foot on French soil at the CDG-Roissy airport, I took a couple of trains and headed back to my homebase in Sablé-sur-Sarthe. What I currently refer to as "home" is a small, furnished room complete with two faucets and a shower. Prior to leaving the premises to spend nearly six weeks in Miami, I had to vacate said room of every one of my possessions.

Every. Single. Thing.

I had only resided in my room for eleven months, but I soon figured that had been enough time to accrue what I now fondly refer to as "having way too much shit."

The belated spring cleaning took place over the course of five days and it involved several plastic containers and cardboard boxes which were graciously stored in someone's basement.

Arriving once again in Sablé, I found myself with the task of not only settling into my vacated room once more, but also having to move ALL of my possessions across a bumpy terrain so I could progressively organize my items.

This move occurred over two days, in which the first day I opted to take out only items involved in cleaning off body and hair travel residue and clothing a naked mattress so I could collapse into a well-merited rest.

Being a perpetual optimist, rather than complaining about the unavoidable labor of moving items under the hot, summer sun, I viewed it as the opportunity to redecorate my very humble abode. I had the genius idea to move some furniture around, which cleared out some space on the floor, enough for me to never have to side-step and trip over the veritable minefield of books, clothes and boxes ever again.

On the second day, I loaded a flat barrel with some plastic containers and made the first of multiple journeys from the basement to my room.

Suddenly, I heard a faint "mew" emanate from behind me. I craned my neck and spotted a thin, dark cat, eyes intently fixed upon my being.

I didn't think too much of this stray and continued with the task of hauling heavy plastic containers back to my room. I made it to my building, gradually unloaded the cart of the boxes and dumped them into my room.

"Mew."

I turned on my heel toward the glass front door. There, peering inside, was the cat patiently waiting for me to open the front door. "Mew," it beckoned once more as it blinked a couple of times.

"Sorry, cat, I can't let you in the building," I replied, hoping it would somehow magically be able to interpret human language. "It's against the rules, you know."

I opened the glass door, shooed it away, and continued with a second trek to the basement to repeat my previous actions.

Thirty seconds passed when I had the impression that I wasn't alone with this venture. I stopped in my tracks and turned to look behind me.

"Mew."

There was the cat, trailing a mere ten paces away from me. I took pity on its lithe form and forlorn calls. I headed back to my building (the cat following me) and fetched a small bowl of milk in the kitchen. As I made it out of the building once more, I saw that the cat had once again patiently waited by the entrance.

I placed the bowl of milk in a few feet away from the entrance and the cat eagerly lapped its free meal.

I went back to the basement, loaded the cart with more plastic containers, then headed to my building.

The cat was still there, stationary, by the front door.

"Mew," it said, in a more forceful tone.

I sighed and in my inane quest to make stray animals understand human speech told it to run off and catch of a couple of mice. I shooed it away and unloaded the plastic containers into my room.

Like that will happen with equality of the sexes. 

I paused for a moment, took a sip of cold water, and mentally prepared myself to follow through with a third trip to the basement. I reached the front door. My jaw dropped.

"Mew."

I dawned on me that I had acquired my very first stalker.

I huffed and told the cat to go away and leave me alone, for I was allergic to his kind.

"Listen, cat, this isn't going to work. I can't adopt you as my pet. It's not going to happen, so scram."

"MEW," it uttered sternly.

I ignored its scornful tone and continued the move toward the basement. I checked behind to see if my furry stalker trailed me.

He did. He stopped the instant he realized that I had spotted him chasing me in broad daylight. I harrumphed and kept walking.

Even when I went indoors to gather my things in the basement, stalker cat patiently waited for my return to gaze at me with those big almond-shaped eyes.

"Mewwwww."

I loaded the containers onto the cart and rushed back to my room, stalker cat in tow.

"MEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW," he screeched when I made it to the front door. This time, his call was filled with accusatory animosity. With that one, brief sound, I interpreted his speech to translate as "Bitch, you gave me milk. You're just as well MINE from this point on."

From outside of the glass door, his baleful expression was cut with a fleeting glance of being in confused pain. Why was I rejecting him? Why couldn't I appreciate that I finally had someone who was willing to stick by my side?

Probably because his relentless chasing freaked me out. I bid my stalker cat good-bye and closed the door to my room.

Within a few hours, my abode took on a new air:

It may not be much, but it's quite cozy. 

Content with my work, I took a well-deserved shower followed by a jet-lag induced nap.

Barb the French Bean