Posted by Loulou on Jan 8, 2014 | 0 comments

Hey, it’s the OTHER one, tu comprends?

Oh, boy, does mama get into trouble with her “mwah-mwahs”.

You know the French custom, now world-wide, it seems, that when one runs into a friend or greets on the street, there is the exchange of kisses, either real or air-borne and evidently, there is a very particular way of doing them.

Does mama know that? No, she doesn’t. Or at least she hasn’t quite learned the protocol yet. Since she kisses me all the time and also papa, she doesn’t discriminate about where and how it is done or how long it should last because she kisses us all over the place and there are no rules as there are in France.

For example, mama does the mwah-mwah with all of her friends and there is a kiss to one cheek and then to the other.  But WHICH cheek?  Does one start with the left one or the right one, from the kissers point of view? And if one starts with the wrong cheek, oh, boy.

Mama finds herself all the time either landing a nice one on someone’s nose, or worse yet, landing smack dab on the lips of say, a semi-distant friend’s husband (or wife!) or someone she has known forever but does NOT want to kiss on the lips, no matter what.

Then she asks the befuddled person, now totally confused by having mama change cheeks (!) and by finally getting the mwah-mwah over, “Which cheek do I start with?”  And half the time, even the French don’t know which one to choose and they don’t really have an answer either but I’m sure that Miss Manners or someone like her has a solution to this and I’m going to look it up right now!

Try this: http://www.azurworld-england.co.uk/general/a-guide-to-the-french-cheek-kiss/

So, I guess it’s the right cheek, but I’ll bet mama is going to go through a lot of cheekiness over the years by kissing the wrong one every now and then.

Her good friends actually do a real kiss, smack, smack, but that’s only with very good friends and the occasional Russian. And there is always the chance of leaving the other person deaf with a thunder kiss too close to an ear!

With me, she just does little kissy-kissy poohs and I do my “Aw, shucks” look and sort of wiggle around and shut my eyes halfway and pretend to enjoy it, but then I’m outta there when it’s over.

Kisses are okay, but give me a good workover with shiatsu or Tragering and I’m a happy camper…

It’s a tough life, but someone has to live it…