One Night in Grenoble

One warm night in Grenoble, I was walking home from a drink with three friends: Emma from England and Leena and Nisha from India.  We turned a cobblestoned corner to walk down a narrow street and came across a huge pile of plastic coat hangers.  As if someone had taken a 5 bushel box of them and turned them out onto the street.  Leena and Nisha had just been complaining about not having enough hangers when drying their laundry.  So I said, “Hey! Free hangers!”

Nisha and Emma, being only 20 years old, were cautious of anything found lying in a heap in the street and stood back.  Leena and I, being over 30, were delighted at the sheer luck.  We each leaned in to help ourselves.  In a bent position, a hanger in each hand, I pivoted to the other two and said “C’mon!  Just take three.”

All of a sudden (I love this part, because when I retold the story in my French class I got the “all of a sudden” part correct), two police officers came running up the alley shouting - in French of course - “blah! blah, blah, blah?!  blah!!!”

Still in a bent position, my mouth turned into an O.  My brain couldn’t translate fast enough.  Giving up on explaining the situation in the here and now, my head leapt ahead to what I would say to Douglas in my one phone call.   “They were the clear plastic kind, with a metal hook sticking out the top.  …. No, I don’t think I’ll get to keep them.  …  You’ll probably need to bring my translated birth certificate, the housing contract, a bank RIB form, and a representative from the American consulate in Lyon.  ….  I haven’t seen the Indians, but I think I hear ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen’ in Hindi.”

Apparently caught red-handed, with the loot firmly in her hands, Leena tried to explain “We just found these here”.  Emma and Nisha took another step away from us.

Finally, a voice screamed from the walkie-talkie (or a talkie-walkie as the French call them) that a vandal had been spotted at a store up the street.  The two cops ran off as quickly as they arrived.

Leena and I put down the hangers in our hands and the four of us slipped away into the shadows.