The big surprise Guess what Charlie yelled my brother as he burst into my bedroom He was wearing his plaid Sherlock Holmes cap with the flaps and he was clutching a magnifying glass in his hand Hmm Let’s see I said You’ve been spying on Mom and Dad How did you know Elementary my dear Watson Max shrugged He had no idea what I was talking about He had never actually read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes He’d only looked at the pictures You’ll never guess where we’re going on our next trip And before I could answer he shouted France That’s right Vee ahre goink to Frahnce
He put on his Pink Panther fake French accent He always mixes up the Pink Panther and Sherlock Holmes What a knucklehead That was some pretty exciting news I’d always dreamed of going to Paris I’d even made a list of the things I wanted to see First off was the Eiffel Tower of course No elevator for me I’d climb every one of the 1,665 steps to the very top and see the whole city at my feet Then I wanted to look at the spot where the Hunchback of Notre Dame took the plunge Next on my list was the underground stuff the metro that was a hundred times bigger than Montreal’s subway system and a boat ride through the sewers of Paris They both probably smelled about the same And I’d read somewhere that you could visit caves under the city where the Romans used to bury their dead You could see huge piles of skulls and bones by candlelight Try and picture that Not to mention the French Disneyland That’s right There is a French version of Disneyland not far from Paris I wondered if Mickey Mouse wore a beret and carried a loaf of French bread under his arm I couldn’t wait to find out We went into the living room where my parents were studying a gigantic map of France It looked as if every
little village and stream and castle was marked on this map of theirs Maybe even every mushroom And that was how I found out that we were not going to Paris after all My mother had her finger on the name of a village that was smaller than a speck of dust somewhere in the hills in the southern part of France When she took her finger off the dot I read the name of the village It was called Celeriac Sell-air-ee-ack I think that’s some kind of a vegetable Imagine coming from a village that’s named after a vegetable And not even a famous one either We have a big surprise for you she announced My brother and I looked at each other Our parents surprises usually mean bad news for us Like the time we nearly died in a sandstorm in the middle of the Arizona desert because they didn’t want to go to a normal place like the Grand Canyon Or that little picnic we had with the alligators in some swamp whose name I still can’t pronounce We’re going to live in Celeriac for a year my mother told us We found a lovely old house that’s walking distance from your new school And the countryside is breathtaking Isn’t that wonderful My brother and I stared at her Was my mother going crazy A year in France It’s going to be a real cultural experience my father
