For example, if you are a female driver, and a North African male police officer pulls you over for blatantly disregarding a stop sign, one or all of the following strategies may prove handy:
- Upon the officer’s arrival at your vehicle, state firmly, but also flirtatiously, that you do not speak French, while affirming that you are fluent in English.
- Immediately contradict yourself by recalling that you do speak one word in French: enchanté.
- Through telepathy, disallow all other passengers in your vehicle to translate or to laugh, as either of these may disservice you by communicating unintended messages to the officer.
- When possible, provide a geography lesson to clarify confusing nuances of states in your home country that share names with cities.
- Display empathy for the officer’s difficulties in speaking your native language by attempting to translate for him. The phrase, “I understood that to mean you don’t speak English and you’re letting me off with a warning” may serve you well.
3 comments:
So, Jeanine got pulled over, huh?
So, how well does it work if you're a guy and trying to flirt with the male officer?
Maybe I have more success with that approach here in Seattle...
Yeah, shannon... how did you guess it was me? (innocent smile) I have to say, the whole episode was the highlight of my evening... But, the kicker was that as we were pulling away he said something else in french, which I interpreted as, "I'll work on my English so next time I pull you over, you will understand me and I can really give you a ticket!" ...we were laughing so hard that it was hard to keep a strait face when we passed the next four sets of cops.
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