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" As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken. "

Pamela Druckerman

American

Conversation

Rules

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" When I moved to Europe 12 years ago, my biggest concern was whether I'd ever speak decent French. Practically every American I knew came to visit, many saying they dreamed of living here, too. "

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" Soccer may not explain the world or even contain the world. But it makes the world a slightly happier place. "

" The main thing my bookcase says about me is that I'm not French. "

Pamela Druckerman

Main

Says

" Parisiennes rarely walk around wearing the giant diamonds that are de rigueur in certain New York neighborhoods. "

" In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved. "

" I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other. "

" Remember that the problem with hyper-parenting isn't that it's bad for children; it's that it's bad for parents. "

" The overarching conventional wisdom - what everyone from government experts to my French girlfriends take as articles of faith - is that restrictive diets generally don't make you healthier or slimmer. Instead, it's best to eat a variety of high-quality foods in moderation and pay attention to whether you're hungry. "

" Just as dressing well in your forties entails making choices that reflect who you are and not just wearing generic basics, looking good as you get older requires accentuating and enjoying what's specific to you rather than striving for cookie-cutter perfection. "

" The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?' "

" We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces. "

" When we're in the U.S., my kids instantly start snacking all the time. I don't know how it happens. There is just more food available all the time. There aren't all these little different varieties of snack foods in France. "

Pamela Druckerman

Start

Time

" Before Donald Trump took office, optimism about his presidency was the lowest of any president-elect since at least the 1970s. "

" I hear people in their 20s describe the 40s as a far-off decade of too-late, when they'll regret things that they haven't done. But for older people I meet, the 40s are the decade that they would most like to travel back to. "

" Unlike the time sink of binge-watching a TV series, podcasts actually made me more efficient. Practically every dull activity - folding laundry, applying makeup - became tolerable when I did it while listening to a country singer describing his hardscrabble childhood, or a novelist defending her open marriage. "

Pamela Druckerman

Time

Childhood

" Even for natives, French satire is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Its unspoken punch line is typically that things have gone irrevocably wrong, and the government is to blame. "

" Parisians won't admit that they go to the gym, let alone that they're scared of terrorists. "

Pamela Druckerman

Admit

Alone

" When I was 41, I had a very bad back pain, and it turned out to be Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. "

" What you can say, what French parents say to their kids is, 'You don't have to eat everything, honey, you just have to taste it.' And it's that tasting little by little by little that gets kids more familiar with the food and more comfortable with it and more likely to eat it the next time. "

" I always knew the French had a penchant for criticism and abstract thought. Usually, that just meant they complained a lot. "

" America's parenting customs can shock foreigners. "

" I've never gotten a good idea while checking Twitter or shopping. "

" In the Nineties, there was all this new research into brain development, with evidence saying poor kids fall behind in school because no one is talking to them at home, no one is reading to them. And middle-class parents seized on this research. "

" The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality. "

" I've been vacationing in western North Carolina and northern Georgia since I was a kid. I arrive, marvel at the mountains, and put on an unconvincing Southern drawl. "