Can’t Fool This Girl

I ventured out on Friday to do some Christmas shopping in Lausanne. I was happy to find that one of my favorite shops had a woman painting beautiful designs onto glass ornaments that day. She would also individualize the text for each customer. I can never seem to find anything written in French, so I thought this would be perfect. I ordered an ornament similar to another one she had already done. On it I wanted it to say, ‘Noël en Suisse 2010.’ She told me it would be ready in an hour. Our conversation was a mix of French and English. She was clearly a native French speaker and she clearly knew that I was not. After shopping for another hour, I came back for my ornament. Just before I got to the cashier I realized that the woman had misspelled ‘Suisse.’ What the heck! She misspelled the country’s name. That would be like me misspelling ‘America.’ Then I wondered if she did it on purpose because she knew I wasn’t Swiss and wanted to pull one over on the foreigner. I brought the error to her attention and she turned bright red. She was obviously embarrassed by her mistake and quickly fixed it. I wonder if she was spelling it wrong all day?! Two years ago I would have walked out of that store with my misspelled ornament, all pleased with myself because I successfully got what I wanted. I probably would have hung it on my tree and still not realized the error until someone pointed it out to me. This was a proud moment for me. I no longer feel like a complete dumb-dumb. I know a few things.