THEY CALLED US FROGS

Tightly gripping both straps of my large Mickey Mouse blue and red bag, I stormed off the school bus running as fast as I could to the door of our house. I had left my greeting mother behind at our gate, not even having seen her with the blurring tears.

As any mother would, she ran over and hugged me before I could enter the door, letting me sob into her chest unceasingly as my hands clutched to her shirt.

“What did Paul say?” She asked. Paul was one of my close friends when I was in elementary, but we had recently fought over something too stupid for me to remember now.

“It wasn’t him,” I told her, although I couldn’t even tell whether I could be understood or not. “It was Michelle. She told me I sound like a dying animal when I speak French! She told me she understands me better in English!”

Later that day, I had calmed down a bit and collected as much of my five-year-old self as I could. Drawing in my coloring book, I asked mon Papa a question, seeing as how my mother was walking Max (our dog).

“Am I dumb?” I asked.

“You know you’re not. Why are you asking this?”

“Michelle says I talk funny, that I have a mental problem. She said I ate a frog” I explained to him, noticing then that he started to clench his fist.

“Tabarnak, I hate the French!” He yelled, shaking the table as he slammed it. I know now that that was the wrong thing ever to say, that he should have taken a less racist approach.

But from that day on, I couldn’t help but hate them too. It wasn’t until my accent became like theirs that I lost that prejudice, and became too comfortable in the “acceptance chair” to pull the parts of my true self together.

It was only when in 2007 that ten-year-old Alex had asked his Papa the question I should have asked years ago at our dinner table. “Why do you hate the French?”

Turning off the TV, he went on to tell his story, and as he did, I couldn’t help but remember the look in his eyes when he was speaking. He had mournful eyes, staring at me as if someone had died.

At the age of 18, mon Papa had joined the Canadian air force for a reason so beautifully cliché; he wanted to, “fly and see the world.”

It was the tumultuous 1970s, where many marginalized people in society fought for equality, and protested the war in Vietnam. Of course, mon Papa never picked up a newspaper as he never really trusted the people that wrote it; that whole field, he admits, “still makes him feel low-spirited.” Perhaps that’s why he loved to fly, to be up there and look down at the ant people dealing with their big problems. There was no discrimination in the sky.

And, like all pilots, he had to land his plane. In fact, that used to be one of the worst parts of his day, where he could no longer fly against the deep steel-blue sky and had to join the insects in their march.

I noticed mon Papa’s face was a perfect impression of Ebenezer Scrooge, and so I asked him what was his fondest memory of that time. Immediately, the space between his eyebrows crinkled into a star-bust, and he finally showed his teeth as he gave me a smile.

Reclining back into his chair he said, “When I knew that today I wouldn’t have to go to that awful Officer’s Mess–“ (officer’s mess was a lounge area for officers–“where all the Western Canadians went. I would be so relieved.”

Immediately, I asked him why he didn’t want to talk to the people of Alberta or British Columbia. His answer was simple. “They called us frogs.”

“I don’t get it,” I admitted. “You don’t sound like a frog.”

“I didn’t either, to be honest. No one at my school ever called me that. But, British people used to hate the French, and the French liked eating frog legs, and so it became an easy insult.” He responded, grabbing the remote to turn on the TV again.

I’ve heard mon Papa say for a long time his opinion that the English and French are like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis; they don’t like each other, but they’re willing to work it through. As a kid of the 2000s, I’ve never seen any first-hand prejudice. In fact, as a teenager I’ve never been called a frog.

But as mon Papa went on more that day about how the built Alberta man with the roughly-cut beard and the skinny British Columbian with the large birthmark on his cheek used to imitate mon Papa’s “Cluseau” accent, that was the day I formed my own prejudice–I could never look at the English side the same again.

Actually, hold on a second; I’d like to put a pin in that.

I feel it right to tell you that my mother grew up in Peterborough (Ontario) with a family so suburban you’ve probably seen them in promotional posters of the “ideal nuclear family.” Her father, who she still doesn’t like, used to make his impersonation of the “frogs” as one of his favorite staff party tricks.

When he told me this at the summer brunch of 2010, I had a lengthy discussion with him on why he still found this an entirely harmless thing to do–to mock someone’s way of speaking. I’d ask him why Parisian French was more intellectual to him? Why a rough language made you sound dangerous and dumb?

I couldn’t tell you what he answered because honestly his sentences barely made it out with all the Rye Whiskey he was gagging down. In fact, it was so ironic it made me giggle a bit that a man slurring his words was telling me that people like mon Papa had a lesser education.

Taking the pin off the note, it was only a year ago that I figured out why mon Papa’s eyes were gloomy that day I asked him about the air force; he remembered times like when I would not be able to understand him such as when he thickly said, “Être au taquet” instead of “Être motivé.”

Reflecting now, the voyage of my pronunciation from Québécois to Parisian French felt as if someone had snatched the colors of my flag away from my hands. And as they did, filling my empty hand with theirs to lead me down a different road.

One of the significant reasons today why I don't speak French with my family is that it comes with some shame, and so I speak in English for the avoidance of hearing my father say, “what did you mean by that?”.

Not all English and French people are rude; it's impossible today for a nation to be collectively hateful to another. But a large regret of mine was not finding the courage to get off that cosy chair and find my real flag.

If not for me, than for mon Papa.