French Family, French Broken Legs

If you don't take cheese seriously, you're doing it wrong.

So! I somehow agreed to going on a road trip and staying the night in the French town of Voujeaucourt. Comme habitude, I didn't know the details until I was all ready there. We were staying with B's sister, brother in law, and their new baby Eliza.

Lets get one thing straight here. I have NO PROBLEM with babies. As far as I can tell they're just innocent bystanders. It's the relentless cloud of high pitched nonsensical sounds and songs that surround said baby that leads me to pray for nuclear holocaust. That said, I suffered greatly throughout the afternoon and evening. Prolonged hours of the usual baby treatment compounded with a group of 5 adults speaking French at the speed of sound lead to sweating and serious headaches.

It didn't help that Stephane, B's brother in law, found it perfectly pertinent to inflate the air mattress for us with a hair dryer. Bien sur, the thing melted and developed holes. So while I was curled helplessly on a bean bag, freezing, stinky, and hung over after the day of eating and drinking, the boys scurried around trying to make us a bed out of sofa cushions, blankets, and yoga matts. OK, whatever. I was so scared of Aliens the night before I hadn't gotten to sleep till 5, so I was ready for anything.

But then! In the night! An enormous crash. Tout le monde (sans B of course, since you could wake the dead before you could wake him) jumped out of bed and bumped into each other frantically looking for the meteor or tree or whatever it was that had crashed through our ceiling. Turns out, it was a car in the street literally right outside the door.

I still don't get it; there was only one car, I couldn't figure out what it had hit. Regardless, the driver side was totally smashed. We called the police and watched as Stephane and some neighbors ran out and addressed the driver. At first I couldn't understand why they weren't pulling the poor guy out. Then I realised that you could see that the motor has been pushed through the front of the car and was smashed against his legs. I was dismayed to hear that he was a young kid and thought sympathetically for his mother who would at any time be receiving a terrible phone call.

It took the better part of an hour to get the guy out and I watched nervously through the window the whole time. I wanted to see that he was ok. They had to cut the top of the car completely off. When they finally lifted him out vertically, I was relieved to see he still had both legs, but they were both, obviously, very very broken in all sorts of unpleasant ways. Ugh. Poor guy.

This whole episode passed while B slept. It worried me because I got to thinking what would happen if, perhaps some time in the night here in Dijon, the ceiling of this old monk tower caved in on me or something. If B were sleeping downstairs I'd be without hope! Bombs could be dropping and you can't wake him up!