LA en vie

"What's wrong with your eyes?"

"My little brother has ADHD,"said a girl at the next table. A bunch of teenagers, about 16, were sitting next to me in Starbucks, where I had gone to wait for an hour. "He's got, like, two personalities. When he takes his medication, he's one brother, and when he goes off it, he's another kid."

"I used to be on Ritalin too," said a boy. "I just went off a year ago. It's kind of a relief but my schoolwork got worse."

"My boyfriend is like, a different person when he takes his Ritalin," said another girl. "It's like, 'Whoa, dude, what's wrong with  your eyes?'"

Encounter at LAX

"Are you French?"

"Could you fill it up, please?" I said to the man at the full-service station. (I notice that too many of these posts revolve around cars.)

"Sure. Are you French?" he asked.

I was startled. Why would he think I was a foreigner? Well, he was Mexican himself, so maybe he couldn't hear that I have an American accent. I was dressed all in black...in a skirt...(everyone here seems to wear pastel-colored sweatsuits-- I suppose I will eventually too) and I had gotten out of the car to speak to him.

A few minutes later I discovered a third reason. His boss had a foreign accent. "Where are you from?" I asked.

"Lyon," he said shortly. (By the way, do you know that the traditional spelling of Marseille, Lyon, and Reims in English is Marseilles, Lyons, Rheims? It is dying out, which I, being a traditionalist, am sorry for.)

He arrived in 1968, so I couldn't help wondering why he left France. It would be exciting if he were a fugitive from the Law.

"Don't know much about geography"

After a young lifetime in Europe, A is discovering the delights of American school.

"You get out at 3 o'clock! And I have a film class five days a week! But no geography at all. And no foreign language. Not even Spanish."

Ice water in winter

What is this mania with ice water everywhere? It's February, for heaven's sake!

The Ethiopian car valet

We went out to a Mexican restaurant last night, where I peered all around hoping to see a celebrity (so far, nobody, but L did just see Beyoncé and Kevin Spacey in Las Vegas).

I was about to park the car myself, but a smiling, very handsome Ethiopian came over and I saw he was the car valet. In Los Angeles, it seems most restaurants of any stature have valet parking.

Everyone got out and I waited for my ticket. "No ticket!" said the valet. "I remember everything!" Then he enthusiastically high-fived a surprised passenger of mine, recently arrived from Great Britain.

But when dinner was over and we came back out, the valet brought me a different car.

"If you are bringing me other people's cars, I would rather have that one," I said, pointing at a black  Mercedes.

"Ah, now I remember," he said. "Have a wonderful eva ning!"

Legendary Highway One

On the way home from the north I took Highway One south, the legendary Pacific Coast Highway that I'd been wanting to drive since I was a passenger many years ago with a bird-watching driver (who kept his nose on the steering wheel and his eyes toward the heavens for several hundred miles, occasionally swerving to yell, "A red-tailed kite! I swear that was a red-tailed kite!").

It was because of him that I knew to stop at Point Lobos to look for sea otters, harbor seals and whales. The ranger lent me a pair of binoculars and I saw the seals lounging on a big rock in Whalers Cove, and sea otters with their white faces, floating in a raft of kelp. No whales, but it is the season to see them offshore.

The rest of the drive was spectacular and it felt like the right time of the year and the right direction to drive. There were few people on the road, and all the RVs (which Europeans like to rent, blocking the beautiful scenery and infuriating everyone behind them) were heading north, not south. That's good because you can only drive about 40 miles an hour without being reckless. The road winds up and down over many a filled-in landslide and past precipitous driveways on the ocean side, land posted "PRIVATE! KEEP OUT!"

It does seem strange that this land should be private. It's so obviously a public good.

Further south, I came across a large elephant seal colony. They were right by the road, and only a fence and gate separated them from us . They were making a deafening racket, honking and squealing. The males have snouts like a bobbed elephant's trunk. I watched them for a while and gradually worked out that an Alpha Male was watching over his harem. Whenever he relaxed his guard, the Beta males would make a beeline for the nearest female, trying to mate with her  regardless of any small cub in the way. In the photo, left, you can see the Alpha's wives screaming for help. Alpha is arriving off camera at right. If you look carefully, you can see a hapless cub's tail right under the Beta Male's scarred white throat. One cub was nearly smothered to death as I watched, but it managed to escape from under the behemoth, wriggling frantically. The Alpha Male heard its cries and came humping across the sand at full speed. The interloper took himself off rapidly to a respectful distance.

Right past the elephant seal colony, I saw what looked like a Spanish castle high on a hill further south. It was San Simeon, the palace of William Randolph Hearst. He was the Rupert Murdoch of his day, a main instigator of the Spanish-American war, and the inspiration for Citizen Kane.

The town where no one spoke English

California used to belong to Mexico till the americanos stole it, so, unlike some people I know, I don't get the least bit upset when people answer me in Spanish. But it was still a shock to get off the I-5 highway through the Central Valley and come to a small town where no one spoke English. As I drove through town, I saw that most people looked Mexican and all the signs seemed to be in Spanish. I had trouble using my credit card at the gas station. Every one of these machines seems to be slightly different, and in Paris I was used to "Full Service." Two pleasant clerks came out to help and another motorist came over. But none of them could speak English, and my Spanish evaporated as I tried to remember how to say, "The counter should be standing at zero." I got back in the car and drove to another gas station. Same story, but here the machine at least had instructions in English! I figured things out.

In this part of the Central Valley, much of the fresh produce of the United States is grown, and picked by immigrant workers. Every town specializes in something; on route 46, where I drove into the sunset, I passed groves of almonds and pistachios (whose American sales boomed after the Islamic revolution in 1979 cut off the supply from Iran).

One of my old friends was driving through a Central Valley town and called out the window to a pedestrian, "What's this town the world capital of?"

"Asparagus!" the man called back.

Instant friends

At the cashiers, I paid for some canisters, two hair dryers and a colander (it's amazing how many little things you need when you are setting up a home). The helpful clerk packed everything up for me, handed me my credit card, and with a smile said, "Thank you, Sedulia!"

The proud parents vs the humble progenitors

One thing I will never get used to is how parents in America brag about their children.

This week I was shown around by a woman who spent forty-five minutes telling me how popular, athletic, intelligent, and hard-working her son and daughter were.

"P makes straight A's," she said. "She's extremely talented. All of her teachers just love her. She has her sights on Harvard, Yale and Columbia."

"That's great, she must be very bright," I said, "but it is very competitive, isn't it? After all, every school in the United States must have straight-A students."

"Well, I suppose that's true," she said. "But we also can play the diversity card. She's part [name of ethnic group] and does [ethnic activity]. And of course, her father is very intellectual. He went to [foreign university]. And I'm a lawyer. I got in to law school everywhere, but I chose [local school] because law is so local. I don't practice any more, but I don't miss it. It's more fun to spend time with my children. P is my best friend. I'm so lucky she adores her brother. He's an excellent athlete so he doesn't always have time for his work, but fortunately his teachers see how bright he is and don't mind."

I let my thoughts drift back to my British friends, who love their children just as much, of course. "Harriet is so thick, you have to hit her with a plank for a thought to penetrate," one would say.

"That's nothing to Milo, he thought the four seasons were salt, pepper, mustard and soy sauce," another would say.

"God help the country when this bunch grows up," said a third. "Mind you, we were even stupider at their age."

Once I read an article that explained that Americans feel they do not own their children, but just luckily happen to know them; therefore it is all right to talk about their prowess. People in most other cultures feel their children are an extension of themselves, and it is unseemly to brag about yourself and your belongings. I think there is a grain of truth to this.

I longed to tell the woman that all American kids seem to make straight A's. I don't think I even know any who don't.