Food that tastes like rubber 🤮

After high school (which seems like so long ago – oh WAIT A MINUTE! It IS so long ago), I lived in France for a year.

In a beautiful town just outside of Paris called Chelles.

I didn’t know what I wanted to be “when I grew up” so I decided to take a gap year between high school and university. I was a nanny for the year in a great family and I went to school at La Sorbonne in Paris.

While I was there, I made a concerted effort to make French friends so that I could learn the language and immerse myself in the culture as much as possible.

One weekend, I was at a large family dinner – a FRENCH family. There were about 12 native French-speaking guests at the table … and ME – the kid who had just graduated from Grade 13 (I told you it was a long time ago) with Core French.

We were talking about the difference between the things that we eat in Canada and the types of meals they enjoyed in France. I was trying to look like a healthier eater than I was (because at the time I was eating a baguette a day and it was NOT unheard of to slip a Milka bar in that baguette) and said…

Je préfère manger de la nourriture sans préservatifs.

I was trying to sound like I was someone who regularly makes wiser choices than a chocolatey baguette so imagine my surprise when most of the people around the table started to giggle or snicker.

When they finally stopped and realized that I looked confused, someone clarified for me.

Apparently, préservatif is what is called a faux ami – a word that looks the same in both languages but means something totally different.

What I meant to say was “I prefer to eat food without a lot of preservatives“.

What I actually said was “I prefer to eat food without condoms.”

Oops.

Lesson learned? Definitely! The good thing is – I have never made that particular mistake again. Embarrassment is a good motivator to NOT forget mistakes that you have made!