You Had to Be There!

So many times I find myself without my camera at an opportune moment for taking an unforgettable photo. Of course, every day in Toulon presents itself as the perfect inspiration for a Walker Evans wannabe. (This afternoon, I counted three passed-out drunks on one street corner – that’s a muckraker’s mother lode!) I’ve also been dying to snap a few shots of all the middle-aged women with Bozo the Clown hair-dos; yep, hair dyed bright red and sculpted into a nicely rounded poof, really brings out the jowls. But, today was really the crème de la crème!

I show up for my class of post-Bac students, they’re basically in a junior college type program to become profession business people, and they keep going on and on about one student who is late. Generally, the students are always late, but that’s usually because they’re loitering outside the school gates smoking cigarettes. This time, however, the buzz in the classroom was that one of the students was supposed to appear dressed as an Indian. Now, what that had to do with his tardiness, I couldn’t tell. Ten minutes later, though, the Chieftain arrived! To say that he was dressed as an Indian (which I now fully understood to mean Native American, and not Indian of the Origin of the Asian Subcontinent), is to drastically understate his case. The 22-year-old was dressed in nothing but a headdress, loincloth, and slippers, and at his waist he had a plastic toy hatchet and bow and arrow. I had to hand it to him, I did not see that coming! (Nor, did I expect him to have had quite so many tattoos; and, if I had known that he had them, I certainly did not expect to be in a position to see them.) And then, there we all were, one English teacher, one American, a handful of French youths dressed for what one could only guess would be a funeral from all the black they always wear, and one errant member of the Village People. Just when I thought the situation couldn’t become more ridiculous, they all turned to me as if I fully understood what the Indian thing was all about because I am from North America. Of course, the only thoughts running through my head was how incredibly un-PC this all was and how this would never ever happen in an American school and how it is most certainly inappropriate to even refer to someone as an Indian when they are in fact Native Americans and it is more inappropriate still to dress like one and parade around as such; that, mixed with uncontrollable blushing because here was a half-naked man in my classroom, and prudish American that I am, I am unaccustomed to such vulgarity. (Actually, I was starting to wonder how strippers collect tips. I mean, the smallest paper currency is 5 euros, and that’s like $6.50. Do European strippers wear little coin purses on their g-strings? Or, do they actually make more money? The cost of living is certainly greater here…) At any rate, I feigned ignorance, which was easy to do, because I really had no idea what was going on. When I inquired as to why this individual was dressed as an “Indian”, the only response I got was that it was for the North American Carnival, which, unless I’ve been kept in the dark about this all these years, and that every year at this time all of North America has been throwing a big party behind my back, I seriously doubt the existence of said carnival. But, man, you really had to be there!